Fritz Riemann

Anxiety
Using Depth Psychology to Find a Balance
in Your Life

Translated by Greta Dunn

Ernst Reinhardt Verlag Munchen Basel

After studying psychology and training as a psychoanalyst, Fritz Riemann
(1902-1979) became one of the founders of the Institute for Psychological
Research and Psychotherapy in Munich (today, Academy for Psychoanalysis
and Psychotherapy). He was lecturer and teaching analyst and had his own
psychotherapeutic practice. He was also an honorary member of the American
Academy of Psychoanalysis in New York (today, American Academy of Psy­
choanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry). "Anxiety" ("Grundformen der Angst")
is Riemann's best-known work.

Original title:
Fritz Riemann: Grundformen der Angst. Eine tiefenpsychologische Studie.
© 37th edition 2006 by Ernst Reinhardt Verlag Miinchen/Basel

Also available from the author:

"Grundformen der Angst", audio book, 2nd edition 2006,

ISBN 978-3-497-02749-1

"Die Fahigkeit zu lieben", 8th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3-497-01901-4;

audio book 2008, ISBN 978-3-497-01989-2

"Die Kunst des Alterns", 4th edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-497-01955-7;

audio book 2008, ISBN 978-3-497..:01988-5

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche

Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN 978-3-497-02043-0

© 2009 by Ernst Reinhardt, GmbH & Co KG, Verlag, Miinchen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or utilized in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage
or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in Germany

Cover Design: based on an idea by ZERO, Miinchen

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 Contents

Introduction 7

The c h a ra cter of a n x i ety

a n d l i fe's a n t i n o m ies

III
III
III
III Fear of commitment 20
III
III
III
III
The schizoid personalities
III

T h e s c h i z o i d per s o n a n d l ove 25
T h e s c h i z o i d per s o n a n d a gg res s i o n 31
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d 35
E x a m p les o f w h a t t he s c h i z o i d pers o n ex pe r i e n ces 42
S u m m i n g u p 49

Fear of self-becoming 61
III
: The depressive personalities
III

T h e dep res s i ve pers o n a n d l ove 70

T h e dep res s i ve pers o n a n d a gg res s i o n 74
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d 78
E x a m p les o f w h a t t h e de p res s i ve per s o n ex pe r i e n ces 90
Summing up 99

III
III
III
III
III
Fear of change 1 09
III
III
III
The compulsive personalities
III

T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n a n d l ove 1 22
T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n a n d a gg res s i o n 1 28
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d 1 35
E x a m p l es of w h a t t h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n ex pe r i e n ces 1 43
Summing up 1 48

III
III
C o n te n t s : 5
III
 •
·
•
•
•
Fear of necessity 159
•
•
• The hysteric personalities
•
•

T h e hyste r i c per s o n a n d l ove 167

T h e hyster i c per s o n a n d a gg res s i o n 175
The b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d 177
E x a m p les of w h a t t he h y s te r i c per s o n ex pe r i e n ces 188
S u m m i ng up 194

•
•
•
•
Conclusion 202
·

•
•
·
• Index 216
·

6 :• C o n te n t s
•
 Introduction
The character of anxiety
and life's antinomies

nxiety is an inescapable part of our life. In constantly chan­

A ging guises it accompanies us from the cradle to the grave.
The history of mankind illustrates our never-ending efforts to
govern anxiety, to allay, to overcome or to confine it. Magic, re­
ligion and science have all attempted this. The security of belief
in God, devoted love, discovering nature's laws or world-re­
nouncing ascetism and philosophical insight do not lift fear from
us, but they can help to make the burden lighter and perhaps help
us to use it fruitfully for our own development. The belief that it
is possible to live without anxiety will remain one of our illu­
sions; it is integral to our existence and is a reflection of our de­
pendencies and the knowledge of our mortality. We can only try
to cultivate counterforces against it: courage, trust, knowledge,
power, hope, humility, belief and love. These can be of help to us
in accepting anxiety, in our dealing with it, in repeatedly con­
quering it. We should regard with scepticism methods of any kind
that promise us a life free of anxiety; they do not do justice to the
reality of being human and give rise to illusory expectations.
Even though anxiety is an unavoidable part of our lives, this
does not necessarily mean that we are always conscious of it.
However, in a manner of speaking, it is omnipresent and can im­
pinge on our consciousness at any moment when summoned by
an inner or outer experience. When this happens, we often have
the tendency to evade it, to circumvent it, and we have devel­
oped quite a few techniques and methods to repress or deaden

•
•
T h e c h a ra cter of a n x i ety : 7
•
 it, to cover it up or to disclaim it. However, just as death does
not cease to exist when we are not thinking about it, neither does
anxIety.
Anxiety exists independently of the culture or level of devel­
opment of a people or an individual. What are different are mere­
ly the obj ects of fear, those things which trigger the anxiety and,
correspondingly, the means and measures we avail ourselves of
in order to combat this anxiety. Today, in general, we no longer
fear natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning, and solar
and lunar eclipses have become an interesting natural spectacle.
They elicit no anxiety as we know they do not denote a perma­
nent disappearance of these heavenly bodies or even the end of
the world. In their place we have anxieties that earlier cultures
were not affected by - we are afraid, for instance, of bacteria, of
new diseases, of automobile accidents, of old age and loneliness.
In contrast to this, the methods of dealing with anxiety have
changed very little. Only today, in place of sacrifices and magic­
al counterspells, we have modern, fear-suppressing pharmaceut­
ical treatments - but anxiety is still with us. Probably the most
significant new prospect for anxiety management is psychother­
apy in its various forms: first it reveals the history of the origins
of anxiety in the individual, then it researches the interrelation­
ship between individual-familial and socio-cultural conditions.
This makes possible the confrontation with anxiety - the goal be­
ing fruitful anxiety management through further maturation.
Obviously, one of life's balancing acts lies herein: If, through
the agency of science and technology, we are able to make pro­
gress in mastering the world and therefore eliminate or do away
with certain fears, we still exchange these fears for others. The
fact that anxiety is an inescapable part of life is not altered in the
least. Only one new fear seems to belong to our modern life: We
increasingly recognize anxieties that arise from acts and deeds of
our own making which turn against us. We recognize the fear of
the destructive forces within ourselves - think only of the dan­
gers inherent in the misuse of nuclear power or of the possibil­
ities for power arising from intervention in natural life cycles.
Our hubris appears to be turning against us in the manner of a
boomerang; lacking in love and humility, the will to have power

8 :
• I n t ro d u ct i o n
•
over nature and over life gives rise to the fear in us that we our­
selves can become manipulated beings, empty of meaning. If in
former times mankind was afraid of the forces of nature, helpless
and at the mercy of threatening demons and avenging gods, to­
day we must be afraid of our very selves.
Therefore, it is an illusion to think that "progress" - which is
always also a regress - will relieve us of our anxieties; certainly,
it will remove some of them, but it will at the same time result in
new fears.
The experiencing of anxiety is thus part of our existence. How­
ever valid this is, every human being experiences his or her own
personal variation of anxiety, "the" fear, which exists as little as
does "the" death, or "the" love and other abstractions. Everyone
has his or her own personal, individual form of anxiety that be­
longs to them and their being just as everyone has their own form
of love and has to die their own death. Thus, anxiety only exists
when experienced and reflected by a particular person. Therefore
it always has a personal imprint in spite of the collective funda­
mental experiencing of fear common to all. This, our personal
fear, is linked to our individual life situation, to our disposition
and our environment; it has its own phylogenesis which starts
virtually when we are born.
If we look at anxiety for a moment "without anxiety", we get
the impression that it displays a double aspect: on the one hand
it can stimulate us, on the other it can paralyse us. Anxiety is at
all times a signal and a warning in the case of danger, while at the
same time having the character of a challenge, namely the impulse
to overcome it. The acceptance and mastering of anxiety signi­
fies a stride in development, it allows us to mature a step further.
Avoiding anxiety and the need to deal with it, on the other hand,
causes us to stagnate. It hinders our further development and we
remain childish in that area where the obstacle of anxiety has not
been overcome.
Anxiety always arises when we find ourselves in a situation
with which we cannot cope or cannot cope with yet. Every de­
velopment, every step on the road to maturity is a cause of anx­
iety as it leads us into something new, something unknown and
for which we do not yet have the coping skills. It leads us into

fII
fII

T h e c h a ra cte r of a n x i ety : 9
.
 internal or external situations that we have not experienced be­
fore and which we have not yet experienced in ourselves. Along­
side the attraction of something new and the love of adventure
and j oy of taking risks, everything new, unknown, done-or-ex­
perienced-for-the-first-time contains anxiety. B ecause our lives
constantly lead us into unknown territory, into what is unfamil­
iar and not yet experienced, anxiety is our constant companion.
We generally become conscious of it at important stages in our
development. Those places where old and trusted ruts must be
abandoned, where new tasks are to be dealt with or changes are
due to be made. Development, becoming an adult and matur­
ation therefore appear to have a lot to do with mastering anxiety,
and every age has its own appropriate rites of passage with the
corresponding anxieties that must be mastered if the process is
to be successful.
Therefore, there are completely normal, age- and develop­
ment-appropriate anxieties that a healthy person can weather and
can grow through. Coping with these is important for his or her
further development. Consider for a moment the first indepen­
dent steps of a small child when for the first time it has to let go
of the mother's hand and must overcome the fear of walking alone,
the fear of being left alone in an open space. Or think of the great
turning-points in our lives. Let us take the first day of school when
the child has to leave the bosom of its family and is expected to
adapt to a new and strange community and to assert itself there.
Let us take the example of puberty and the first encounters with
the opposite sex under the compulsion of erotic longing and sex­
ual desire; or let us think of the commencement of a career, the
founding of one's own family, of motherhood and, ultimately, of
growing old and the encounter with death. In all beginnings or
before any first-time experience, there is always anxiety.
All these fears belong, in a manner of speaking, to our lives in
an organic way because they are linked with bodily, emotional
or social stages of development that manifest themselves with the
assumption of new functions in a community or society. Such a
step always signifies a crossing of borders and challenges us to
let go of what is habitual and trusted and to venture into new and
unfamiliar territory.

•
•
10 :• I n t ro d u ct i o n
 In addition to these fears, there are a plethora of individual
anxieties that are not necessarily typical of the particular bor­
derline situations mentioned above and which we often cannot
understand in others as we do not have them ourselves. Thus for
one person loneliness can trigger severe anxiety, while another
suffers in crowded gatherings; others have panic attacks if they
have to cross bridges or an empty square; some cannot stand to
be in enclosed rooms; and yet others are afraid of harmless ani­
lllals such as beetles, spiders or mice.
As varied as the phenomenon anxiety might seem in the case
of different people - there is practically nothing that we cannot
develop anxiety about - when we look more closely it is always
variations of quite particular anxieties which I call for this reason
"basic forms of anxiety" and which I would like to describe. All
possible variations of anxiety are derivatives of these basic forms.
They are either extreme and distorted variations of these forms
or they are displaced onto other obj ects. We have the tendency,
namely, to attach anxiety that has not been dealt with, not mas­
tered, onto harmless substitute obj ects that are easier to avoid
than the actual elicitor of anxiety which we are unable to elude.
The basic forms of anxiety are linked to our mental state to­
wards the world, with our 'extendedness' between the two great
antinomies in their insoluble dichotomy and polarity in which
we are expected to live. I would like to clarify these two antino­
mies with an allegory that positions us in relation to superper­
sonal order and the natural laws of which we are generally not
conscious but which are real nevertheless.
We are born into a world which obeys four powerful impul­
ses: Our earth rotates around the sun according to a certain
rhythm, that is, it moves around the central star in our closer world
system in a movement that we call revolution, that is, "upheaval".
At the same time, the earth also revolves around its own axis there­
fore carrying out the rotary motion called self-rotation. This sets
two further contradictory or complementary impulses in motion
that keep our world system moving while at the same time im­
pelling this movement to keep to prescribed courses: gravitational
force and centrifugal force. Gravitational force holds our world
together, so to speak, adjusting it centripetally inwards towards

•
•
T h e c h a ra cter of a n x i ety : 11
•
 the centre and has the features of a holding and attracting pull.
The centrifugal force strives centrifugally outward, fleeing the cen­
tre, it thrusts out into the vastness of infinity and has the features
of a letting-go, a drawing away. It is only the equilibrium of these
four impulses that guarantee the lawful, living order in which we
live and which we call the cosmos. Should one of the movements
overweigh the others, or fail, this would disturb and even destroy
the magnificent order of the universe and lead to chaos.
According to this cosmic analogy, we are subj ect to four fun­
damental imperatives that are reflected in us as strivings, each con­
tradicting the other but at the same time complementing one an­
other. In ever-changing manifestations they run through our
whole life continually demanding new responses from us.

The first imperative which, to follow our allegory, would corres­

pond to the rotation is that we should become a unique indi­
vidual affirming our self-being and delineating ourselves from
others, that we should become an inimitable personality, and
not an interchangeable member of the mass. From this, however,
arises all the anxiety that threatens when we distinguish ourselves
from others thereby falling outside the usual parameters of se­
curity, belonging and community which would mean loneliness
and isolation.

The second imperative, which, to follow our allegory, would cor­

respond to the revolution is that we should trustingly open our­
selves to the world, to life and to others, that we should commit
ourselves to the non-ego, to what is foreign, to enter into an
exchange with that which is outside ourselves. What this means
is the aspect of commitment - in the broadest sense - to life. From
this, however, arises all the anxiety of losing our ego, of becom­
ing dependent, of surrendering ourselves, of not being able to live
our life in accordance with our self-being, of sacrificing it to others
and, in the demands of adaptation, having to give up too much
of oneself. Here, therefore, we are talking about an aspect of our
dependencies, about our "being thrown" off balance. However,
in spite of these dependencies and hazards threatening our ego
which allow us to feel our helplessness, we need to turn towards

12 : I n t ro d u ct i o n
•
life, we need to open ourselves. If we do not risk this, we will
remain isolated single beings without commitment, without be­
longing to anything greater than ourselves; and ultimately with­
out security because we have not learned to know ourselves or
our world.
In this first antinomy we have encountered the one paradox­
ical imposition demanded of us by life: We should live by the pre­
cepts of self-preservation and self-fulfilment as well as those of
self-surrender and self-forgetfulness; at the same time we must
overcome the fear of self-loss and the fear of self-becoming.

And now to the other two imperatives that stand in a polar rela­
tion of contradiction and complementation as in the ones just de­
scribed:

The third imperative, in our allegory the centripetal correspond­

ing to the force of gravity, is that we should strive forpermanence.
We should, as it were, settle down in this world, establish our­
selves and plan for the future, be as ambitious as though we were
going to live forever, as if the world were a stable place and the
future foreseeable, as if we could count on permanence - know­
ing all the while that "media vita in morte sumus", that our life
can end at any moment. This imperative, demanding permanence
and that we plan for an uncertain future, yes, demanding even
that we assume we have a future, as if we therefore had some­
thing solid and secure before us - this imperative encompasses
all anxieties connected with our knowledge of mortality, of our
dependencies and of the irrational incalculability of our being:
fear of venturing into what is new, of planning in the dark, of let­
ting oneself go with the eternal flow of life that never stands still
and seizes us even in the midst of change. This is what is meant
by the saying that you can never swim in the same river twice -
the river, and therefore oneself, is always another. However, if we
were to renounce permanence we would be incapable of creating
or realizing anything; everything we produce must have some­
thing of this permanence - otherwise we would not even begin
to try to achieve our goals. Thus we live as if we had unlimited
time at our disposal, as if what we have achieved were stable -

•
•
T h e c h a ra cter of a n x i ety : 13
•
 this semblance of stability and permanence, this illusory eterni­
ty' is a significant impulse that drives us to act.

And now, the fourth imperative, in our allegory corresponding

to the centrifugal, the fleeing force. This expects of us that
we should always be ready to change ourselves, to welcome
wholeheartedly alterations and developments, to renounce the
well-known, to abandon traditions and customs and to constantly
detach ourselves from what we have only just achieved and to
take our leave, to regard everything as merely transient. Connect­
ed to this demand to vitally continue to develop ourselves at all
times, not to halt, not to attach, to remain open to everything new
while venturing into the unknown, is the fear of being determined
and held fast by order, necessities and habit; constricted, limited
in our opportunities and our striving for freedom. Ultimately,
what is threatened here, in contrast to the anxiety described
above where death is seen as transient, is death as something
rigid and final. If we renounce the impulse towards change and
the venture into the unknown then we remain clinging to what
is accustomed, repeating and holding on to the uniformity of
things past - and time and the rest of the world will overtake us
and forget us.
With this we have sketched the other antinomy, a further de­
mand made on us by life: that we should strive at one and the
same time for permanence and change, that we must overcome
the fear of inexorable transience as well as the fear of inescapable
necessIty.

Thus we have become acquainted with the four basic forms of

anxiety that I will sum up once more as follows:

1. The fear of surrendering oneself, experienced as loss of the

ego and dependency;
2. The fear of self-becoming, experienced as being unprotected
and isolated;
3. The fear of change, experienced as transience and insecurity;
4. The fear of necessity, experienced as finality and bondage.

14 : I n t ro d u c t i o n
•
All possible forms of anxiety are ultimately always variations of
these four basic forms and are connected to the four basic im­
pulses that are also part of our being and that also complement
and contradict each other in pairs: As a striving towards self­
preservation and dissociation with counter-striving towards self­
abandonment and belonging; and on the other hand as a striving
towards permanence and security, with counter-striving towards
change and risk. Every striving is accompanied by the anxiety of
the counter-striving. And yet, if we return to our cosmic allego­
ry, a living order only appears possible if we attempt to live an
equi-potentiality between these antinomian impulses. However,
an equi-potentiality such as this does not mean something stat­
ic, as one might think; rather, it is full of tremendous inner dy­
namism because it is something that is never attained but must
always be re-created.
Here, we must take into account that the type of anxiety be­
ing experienced and its degree of intensity are in a large measure
dependent upon our genetic makeup, on our "inheritance" as well
as on the environmental conditions into which we are born; that
is, on our physical and mental-spiritual constitution as well as on
our personal biography, the history of our coming into being.
Our anxieties have their own history too, and we will see what
great importance our childhood has with regard to this. Anxiety
in every person is influenced by disposition and environment,
which partially explains why other people's anxieties are difficult
to empathize with - they arise from life-conditions that are too
disparate from our own.
Disposition and environment - to which society belongs along
with the family, the "milieu" - can also encourage certain anx­
ieties while leaving others in the background. A mainly healthy
individual - one who is not disturbed in his or her development
- will usually be able to cope with anxieties and perhaps be able
to overcome them. Those disturbed in their development experi­
ence anxiety more intensely as well as more often, and one of the
basic forms of anxiety will predominate.
Anxiety can be a heavy burden and cause illness if it increa­
ses above a certain level or if it lasts too long. Those that cause
the most severe strain are the anxieties that were experienced too

•
•
T h e c h a ra cter of a n x i ety : 15
•
 early in childhood, at an age when the child had not yet been able
to develop defences against them. Whenever anxiety becomes too
great due to intensity or duration, or if we encounter it at an age
when we are not yet ready for it, it is difficult to cope with. The
activating and positive aspect of anxiety does not apply; arrested
development, stagnation or regression into earlier, childish be­
haviour patterns, as well as symptom formation, are the result.
Understandably, it is particularly in childhood that we will en­
counter anxiety experiences that are not age-appropriate and anx­
ieties in such quantities that they override the degree of what can
be tolerated. The weak ego of the child, still in the process of de­
veloping, cannot yet cope with certain levels of anxiety; the child
is dependent on outside help and will sustain impairment if left
alone with such overwhelming anxieties.
In the case of adults, rare exceptional circumstances such as
war, imprisonment, life-threatening danger, natural and other ca­
tastrophes as well as endopsychic experiences and processes, can
also overstep the threshold of tolerance so that they react with
panic, impulsive acts or neuroses. In normal cases, however,
adults have the advantage over children in that they have a much
broader selection of responses and counterforces at their dispos­
al. They can defend themselves, think through the situation and
recognize the anxiety trigger; most importantly, they can under­
stand where the anxiety comes from; can communicate it and
therefore can depend on understanding and assistance; and they
can calculate possible endangerment correctly. All this is not yet
available to a child; the smaller it is the more it is an obj ect of its
anxieties, it is helplessly at their mercy without the knowledge of
how long they will last and what might still happen.
We will see how becoming supervalent of one of the four ba­
sic anxieties - or, seen from the other point of view, largely giving
up one of the four basic impulses - leads us to four personality
structures, to four types of being-in-the-world, the varying nu­
ances of which we all recognize and in which we all take part with
a varying degree of emphasis. These personality structures, there­
fore, can be understood as one-sided accentuations with regard to
the four main anxieties. The more marked and one-sided the per­
sonality structures being described are, the more probable it is that

16 :
• I n t ro d u ct i o n
•
they arose from developmental disorders in early childhood. Ac­
cordingly, it could be regarded as a sign of good mental health if
someone were able to live with the four basic impulses in a dy­
namic equilibrium - at the same time this would mean that he or
she had also dealt with the four basic forms of anxiety.
To begin with, the four personality structures are normal struc­
tures with certain accentuations. If the accentuation becomes
markedly unilateral, it will attain borderline values that are to be
understood as distorted forms or extreme variants of the four nor­
mal basic structures. Here we are confronted by the neurotic vari­
ants of the structure types as described by psychotherapy and
depth psychology in the four great forms of neuroses: schizo­
phrenia, depression, compulsion neurosis and hysteria. These
neurotic personalities only reflect in an intensified or extreme
form general human existential forms that we all know.
Ultimately, we are dealing here with four different types of
being-in-the-world. In giving an account of these, I would like
to describe the results of the aforementioned unilateralness from
what we could still call quite healthy manifestations through
lighter disorders up to severe and then the most severe disorders.
Constitutionally accommodating traits should be taken into ac­
count; but our interest will be focussed particularly on the bio­
graphical background.
One other important point: Insofar as the description of the
four personality structures takes on the semblance of a typolo­
gy, this would be distinct from other typologies. Based mainly
on psychoanalytical knowledge and experience, it is less fatalis­
tic and irrevocably determining than types derived from consti­
tution or temperament. The latter are represented as inevitable
and unalterable - to be accepted as given. I am interested in some­
thing else altogether.
It is not only because I have certain physical characteristics
that I am like this or like that. Because I have a certain approach,
a certain attitude towards the world and to life, gained from my
life-history, my personality is imprinted and has been given cer­
tain structural features. What has been decreed by fate - genet­
ic psychophysical predispositions, the environment of our child­
hood and the personalities of our parents and educators as well

..

T h e c h a ra c ter of a n x i ety : 17
..
 as society with its rules into which we are born - can be reshaped
to some extent by ourselves, can be changed. It is not something
that has to be accepted. The personality structures dealt with here
should be understood as partial aspects of an integral holistic hu­
man picture. The later continuing development of what at first
were the inevitable, insufficiently developed, neglected, misdir­
ected or alienated and repressed partial aspects of our being can
change the acquired structure. It can complete it for the benefit
of that envisioned wholeness, maturity or rounding-out to the
degree to which each individual is capable of achieving for him
or herself.
As our point of departure, we are therefore, taking the four
generally valid basic attitudes and behavioural choices, as opposed
to the conditions and dependencies of our being whereby we en­
vision the cosmic ideal of a living order and equilibrium between
apparently irreconcilable contradictions.
Retaining the conceptual terms taken from the theory of
neurosis for the four structural types, as well as for the so-called
healthy ones, has practical advantages because in these concepts
the biographical genesis and the neurotic variant can be seen to­
gether. They have also become so widely accepted that finding
new terms seems superfluous. The reader will soon understand
this when the concepts of the schizoid, the depressive and so on
have become familiar and tangible in the imagination.
In this book I have avoided availing myself of the usual dis­
tinction, often encountered in literature, between anxiety and fear.
It was of no importance to my basic concept and also appeared
to me to be not cogent or convincing enough as is evident in the
uncertainty of the use of both terms in colloquial speech. We speak
of death anxiety and fear of death and cannot differentiate be­
tween them without bending over backwards. The general dis­
tinction of applying fear to something specific and concrete and
anxiety to something vague, even irrational, might have a certain
justification but this does not always stand up under closer scru­
tiny: Fear of God, for instance, ought to be God anxiety accord­
ing to the above distinction. I have, therefore, consciously de­
sisted from undertaking a conceptual separation of fear and anx­
iety in this book.

18 :• I n t ro d u c t i o n
•
 This book has been written in order to help the individual to
live, to convey to him or her more self-awareness and under­
standing of others and to show how important our early years
are for our development. It is also written in order to awaken a
sense, to reawaken a sense, of the great interconnectedness of the
universe of which we are part and from which, I am persuaded,
we have much to learn.

•
•
T h e c h a ra cter o f a n x i ety : 19
•
 Fear of commitment
The schizoid personalities

"C o me, let u s be d i ffe re n t fro m a l l t he ot h e r s

w h o tee m a m o n g t he ge n e ra l ra b b le. "
S p i ttel e r

et us look now at the personalities of those whose fundamen­

L
tal problem, from the standpoint of their anxieties, is the fear
of commitment. Those who therefore live supervalently to retain
their self-preservation and ego-boundaries. We call this type of
person schizoid.
We all have the desire to be unique individuals. Just how strong
this desire is can be seen by how sensitively we react if someone
calls us by the wrong name or pronounces our name incorrect­
ly. We don't want to be just anybody, an interchangeable unit; we
want to possess a consciousness of our uniqueness as an individ­
ual. The striving for the demarcation from others is as much a
part of our make-up as is the opposite side of the coin, the need
to belong to a group or collective as a social being. We want to
follow our personal interests while feeling ourselves to be allies
in a partnership, with close human interrelations and responsi­
bilities in equal measure. What will result from someone deny­
ing the giving side of his or her nature and trying to live with self­
preservation as their primary goal ?
The main endeavour of such a person will be toward being as
independent and self-sufficient as possible. To depend on no-one,
to need no-one, to have to answer to no-one, this is of paramount
importance. This is why such a person draws away from others,

20 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n a l i t ies
It
needs to maintain distance, does not allow others to come too
close and interacts only marginally with them. If these borders
are overstepped, it is felt as a threat to his or her life space, as a
danger to the need for independence and integrity and such a per­
son will react brusquely in defence. This is how the typical fear
of human closeness develops. However, in normal life, closeness
is difficult to avoid, so protective measures are sought behind
which he or she can hide.
In particular, such a person will avoid close personal contact
and no intimacy will be allowed. Encounters with individuals or
partners will be shunned and human contacts reduced to the busi­
nesslike. If other people should be sought out, then such a per­
son will feel most comfortable in groups or collectives where it
is easier to maintain anonymity but, with common interests as a
base, a certain feeling of belonging can be experienced. For such
an individual, the cap of invisibility, as in fairy-tales, would be
ideal. From under its protection one could take part in the lives
of others without having to give anything of oneself.
The impression such a person makes on his or her environ­
ment is one of aloofness, distance, coolness, of being unap­
proachable, impersonal and even cold. They often appear odd or
peculiar, their reactions incomprehensible or disconcerting. One
can be acquainted with them for a long time without ever really
getting to know them. If good relations seem to have been es­
tablished, they will suddenly turn around and behave as if they
had never met one before: as if the closer the contact, the more
brusque the cold shoulder must be. The reaction can be unfath­
omable as it is often accompanied by apparently groundless ag­
gression or hostility which can be very wounding to us.
The avoidance of any trusting closeness due to fear of intim­
acy, the fear of opening up and giving of oneself, results in the
schizoid person sinking ever more deeply into isolation and lone­
liness. The fear of closeness increases proportionally the nearer
it approaches. Because feelings such as affection, sympathy, ten­
derness and love result in our coming closer to one other, they
are experienced as particularly dangerous. This explains why it
is usually in such situations that these personalities react in such
a detached, even hostile way and reject others brusquely. They

•
•
Fea r of c o m m i t ment : 21
•
 switch off abruptly, break contact, retreat into themselves and
can no longer be reached.
This causes a yawning chasm to open up between schizoids
and their environment which becomes wider with the passing
years and isolates them even further. As a result, more and more
problematical situations arise. Due to their remoteness from the
rest of humanity, these personalities understand too little about
others. Broader and broader gaps in their knowledge of other peo­
ple develop and cause insecurity in their interactions with oth­
ers. They never really know what is going on in the mind of an­
other, as this is only possible - if at all - in an atmosphere of trust
and affection. This means that they are dependent on assump­
tions and imaginings when trying to orient themselves toward
others. They are, therefore, prey to deep-seated insecurities as to
whether the impressions and expectations they have of others are
their own imaginings - are all their perceptions merely imagin­
ings and projections or are they indeed reality ?
An image, that was probably first used in this context by
Schultz-Hencke to illustrate the perception of the world that such
people have, helps to clarify this - we have all experienced this
situation: We are sitting in a train at the station prior to moving
off. There is also a train on the neighbouring track. Suddenly we
realize that one of the trains is moving. As most trains today move
off very smoothly and almost imperceptibly, we have felt no
tremor, no jerk, so that we have only the optical impression of
movement. We cannot orient ourselves immediately as to which
of the trains is moving, we have to wait until we can pinp oint a
fixed obj ect outside the train before we can decide that it is our
train that is moving and the other that is still, or vice versa.
This picture exemplifies the inner situation of a schizoid per­
sonality for us in a very striking way. They never know for cer­
tain - and this to a degree far beyond the maximum possible in­
security that can be experienced by a healthy person - whether
what they are feeling, perceiving, thinking or imagining exists
merely inside themselves or if it is also " outside". Due to the fra­
gile nature of their contact with human society, a person like this
lacks the ability to find orientation in it and so when evaluating
experiences and impressions vacillates doubtfully between won-

22 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n a l i t ies
•
dering if they are real or are merely imagined, belonging only to
their inner world. Is that person staring at me mockingly or am
I just imagining it ? Was my boss really giving me the cold shoul­
der today, doesn't he like me, was he different from usual - or
did it just seem so to me ? Is there something conspicuous about
me, something wrong with me, or is it just my imagination that
people give me strange looks ? This insecurity can manifest itself
in all degrees of severity, from ever-increasing mistrust and patho­
logical self-referentiality to actual fantasies and perceptual illu­
sions in which the outer and inner worlds are indeed inter­
changeable, without being recognized as such, because one has
reached the stage of assuming one's projections are in fact real.
We can imagine how tormenting and deeply disturbing it must
be when this form of uncertainty becomes a permanent state of
affairs, particularly when it cannot be adjusted due to the above­
mentioned lack of close contacts. In order to confide in some­
one, to communicate to others one's insecurity and anxiety would
presuppose an intimate closeness. Not having such a relationship
with anyone, such a person must go in fear of being misunder­
stood, laughed at, or even declared insane.
Full of mistrust and acting from a deep-seated insecurity -
which, as we will see, is primarily the cause and also secondly the
result of diminished human contact - schizoid persons endeav­
our to develop the functions and skills which they see as promis­
ing to help orient themselves better in the world; the perceptions
of the senses, intellectual insight, consciousness and reason. As
anything to do with emotions and feelings causes them anxiety,
they strive for "pure" knowledge, detached from emotions, which
promises to deliver results on which they can depend. Here one
can understand why schizoid personalities prefer to devote them­
selves to the exact sciences, as these offer them this security and
detachment from subj ective experiencing.
The development of feeling does not keep pace with the de­
velopment of this rational side of the character. Feeling is de­
pendent on intimacy, on a partner, on emotional reference and an
exchange of feelings. It is therefore characteristic for these per­
sons that although they are often very highly developed intellec­
tually, they appear to be retarded in the emotional department;

•
•
Fea r of c o m m i t m e n t : 23
•
 their feelings are underdeveloped, even stunted. This results in
an all-pervasive insecurity in interpersonal relationships which
can make for an infinite number of difficulties in daily life. They
are lacking the interpersonal niceties in their dealings with oth­
ers and do not have an understanding of the nuances of these at
their disposal so that the simplest interactions can become fraught
with difficulty. Here is an example:

A student was to present a paper during the course of h is studies. A s

he lacked any contacts a n d being at the same time "arrogant " - a n
attitude he used to h ide his insecurity - he never tho ught to ask a col­
league how such things were us ually managed. He agonized all alone
over problems which were only in h is m ind and not at all intrinsic to
the task in hand. He was completely unsure whether or not his work
would meet with approval and in h is evaluation of it wa vered irres ­
olutely between overestimation ofselfandfeelings ofinferiority, where
his work either appeared to h im to be exceptional, e ven uniq ue and
brilliant, or suddenly completely trite and inadeq uate. He was unable
to compare his paper with those ofhis colleag ues. He tho ught it would
be embarrassing and he would be opening himselfup to scorn should
he ask them for advice - he had no idea that such beha viour would
be perfectly normal. Therefore, due to his lack of a scale of reference,
he suffered completely unnecessary and s upervalentfears, the greater
part of wh ich he could have been spared had he had natural, collegial
contacts with h is fellow students.

Situations such as this and similar examples of behaviour accu­

mulate in the schizoid person's life and contribute greatly to
making even trivial and everyday occurrences difficult out of all
proportion to their importance. They do not realize that their
problems are based on their difficulties with communication and
are not due to a lack of skills on their part.

24 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n a l i t ies
.
 The schizoid person and love

s mentioned above, it is particularly the stages of devel­

A opment dealing with making human contact that pose a
problem for the schizoid person: starting kindergarten or school;
puberty and encountering the opposite sex; partner relationships
and all other human ties. As any kind of closeness triggers anx­
iety, the closer the schizoid person comes to someone else and
the more the danger looms of loving or being loved, which the
schizoid person can only imagine as a surrendering of the self and
dependency, the more he or she has to retreat.
Emerging difficulties with human contact in childhood should
be recognized by parents and educators as an incipient schizoid
problem complex which can still perhaps be treated in time or at
least alleviated before leaving deep traces. If a child has difficul­
ty in forming interpersonal relationships in kindergarten or at
school; if it has no friends; if it experiences itself as an outsider
and loner or is experienced as such by others; if, during puberty,
a young person avoids relations with members of the opposite
sex and instead buries his or her head in books and shuns con­
tact, spends time tinkering or doing other things in solitude; if
their world view undergoes a crisis at this time with solitary
brooding on the reason for existence without talking to others
about it; then these are alarm signals that one should understand
and for which parents should seek guidance.
Usually for schizoid personalities, the post-puberty period
with its urge toward creating partnerships is even more prob­
lematic. This is because in love we draw closer to one another,
emotionally and bodily. In every loving encounter our self-be­
ing and our independence is endangered, as it were, the more we
open ourselves to intimacy, the more we want to preserve our
sense of self. This is why these encounters often resemble
precipices where the problem, often up till that point unconscious
and unrecognized, becomes painfully obvious. How is such a per­
son to approach another with his or her growing desire for inti­
macy and exchange, for tenderness and love, and particularly when
the aspect of emerging sexual desire is present ? Due to the above-

•
•
... a n d l ove : 25
•
 described gaps in the ability to make contact and the missing nu­
ances in human interrelations which by this age have grown into
an extensive ineptness in dealing with people, integrating sexual­
ity is particularly difficult for such a person. The finer nuances
of how to behave are lacking here too: neither the courting-con­
quering nor the seductive-surrendering aspect is available to
someone like this. Tenderness, the verbal or emotional expres­
sion of affection is alien to this personality and, to a large extent,
there is a lack of empathy, an inability to put oneself in another's
place.
Attempts to solve the conflict between urgent desire and fear
of human contact can take on different forms. Often this person
only enters into non-binding and easily dissolved or purely sex­
ual relationships in which the sexuality is more or less detached
from any experiencing of feeling. The partner is therefore merely
a "sex object" for satisfying the senses but not of any further in­
terest. In addition to this, due to the lack of emotional involve­
ment, partner relationships are easily interchangeable. By avoid­
ing engagement in a deeper intimacy, this person thus protects
him or herself from revealing the entirety of their awkwardness
and inexperience in matters of feeling and from risking the dan­
ger of love. For the same reason he or she repels affectionate ad­
vances by the partner - does not know how to respond and finds
them rather embarrassing than otherwise.
Things get more difficult when the schizoid takes out on the
partner the brusque ambivalence between feelings of love and hate
and the deep-seated misgivings about ever being able to be loved.
Then, the partner is subj ected to ever-new tests, and, in an at­
tempt to allay the distrust, new proofs of love are continually de­
manded. This can escalate to mental as well as actual sadism and
the behaviour can become downright destructive; proofs of love
and signs of affection offered by the partner are debased, belit­
tled, analysed, doubted, or, in a diabolically cunning manner, re­
interpreted as something else. For instance, a spontaneous token
of affection by the partner is interpreted as an expression of an
uneasy conscience, feelings of guilt or attempts at bribery ("What
are you hoping to achieve with this? " "What is this making up
for? "). As there is usually a good theoretical-abstract psycho-

26 : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
.
 logical talent for making associations, this offers infinite possi­
bilities for tendentious reinterpretations such as this. In the nov­
el "Warrior's Rest", the writer Christiane Rochefort has described
such a relationship in an exemplary way. What is particularly well­
depicted is how a woman capable of love is brought over time to
the limits of her tolerance by the schizoid partner.
It is not seldom that, in order not to be trapped, the schizoid
partner destroys with cynicism all tender impulses in him or her­
self as well as in the partner. In a moment when the partner is par-
. ticularly intilnate and loving, the schizoid personality will wound
him or her in the most vulnerable place by ironically ridiculing
their facial expression or what they have said: "Don 't look at me
with such doglike devotion "; "If you knew how silly you looked
just now "; or "Oh leave off these stupid declarations of love and
let's get down to brass tacks " and so on.
Naturally, all the partner's impulse to love is destroyed, un­
less they have an unusual capacity for loving or are of a masochis­
tic countertype who believes - from feelings of guilt, fear of loss
or other motivation - that they must put up with everything or
who experiences pleasure when being tormented. Otherwise the
partner will ultimately have to withdraw or begin to hate, which
can be experienced by the schizoid person as a feeling of triumph
("Now you 're showing your true nature "), but the schizoid per­
son does not realize that his or her own behaviour brought the
partner to this pass. The autobiographical novels of Strindberg
contain much of this schizoid tragedy while at the same time of­
fering telling descriptions of the biographical background of such
personality developments, as in, for instance, "The Son of a Serv­
ant". Axel B org, the protagonist of his novel "By the Open Sea"
is also a brilliantly depicted schizoid person with clearly auto­
biographical features.
If the emotional coldness has progressed further, it escalates
into the extreme and pathological and the borderline to rapes and
sexually motivated murder becomes very thin; particularly when
unresolved feelings of hate and revenge are unconsciously pro­
j ected onto the partner, "transferred" as psychoanalysis calls it ­
unresolved feelings that originally applied to the former person
of reference in childhood. A disassociated instinctual drive that

•
•
... a n d l ove : 27
•
 is not integrated into the personality as a whole is always dan­
gerous; if a deep-seated inability to empathize with the partner
and emotional atrophy are added to this then all sex crimes are
conceivable.
Due to the difficulty of entering into an emotional involve­
ment, even of finding a partner at all, most schizoids attempt to
manage on their own, taking themselves, as it were, as partners
in an exclusive gratification of self. Or they fall back on substi­
tute obj ects as in the case of fetishism. Of course, their ability to
love will not develop when practised on such substitute obj ects.
However, these forms of a disordered ability to love still retain
elements of wanting to love and are an expression of their search­
ing desire.
In the case of schizoid personalities one often finds sexual de­
velopment arrested at the infantile stage even in highly differen­
tiated individuals. It can be understood from the occasional choice
of sexually immature children or adolescents as sexual partners
that the severely contact-disturbed person has less anxiety with
this type of partner and counts on their childlike trust.
Sometimes the suppressed ability to love and yearning for the
giving of oneself break out in extreme jealousy, intensifying to
delusional j ealousy. The schizoid sees how unamiable their be­
haviour is, how minimal their ability to love and senses that for
these reasons it is unlikely they will ever be able to keep their
partner. This is why they have to see rivals in every shadow whom
they often - justifiably - assume are better lovers and more en­
dearing. Harmless and perfectly natural behaviour on the part of
the partner is then reinterpreted with sophistry and hair-splitting
as enigmatic, purposeful and demonic. This can increase to a delu­
sion of reference and, over time, make the relationship unbear­
able, ultimately destroying it with a lust of destruction under
which the perpetrator suffers while still being unable to change
his or her behaviour. The motivation could look like this: If it is
not possible that I can be loved, then I would rather destroy what
I am unable to hold onto myself - then I am at least the active
party and not the sufferer. Thus one can understand this type of
behaviour, that just when this person wants most to love and to
be loved they behave in a particularly unlovable manner. If this

28 : T h e s c h i z o i d p e rs o n
•
then results in the retreat of the partner, this is less painful for
them than if they had really exerted themselves to win the other
and had still been abandoned. Such disappointment prevention
is not rare in schizoid personalities; it also contains -- for the most
part unconsciously - an aspect of a test for the partner: If he or
she still loves me in spite of my behaviour then they really do
love me. B ehind this, one can see everywhere how difficult it is
for such a person to see themselves as loveable. In extreme cases
the mistrust and j ealousy can lead to murder: If the partner does
not love me then I'll make sure they can't love anyone else.
Consciously, the fear of abandoning oneself is usually expe­
rienced by schizoids only as fear of commitment. The yearning
for abandoning oneself, which is part of our being, accumulates
due to being suppressed and intensifies the anxiety so that com­
mitment can only be imagined as a total surrender, as the re­
nouncing of the ego and thus leaving one open to being engulfed
by intimacy. This leads to a demonizing of the partner that
retroactively magnifies the anxiety thereby making some incom­
prehensible behaviour patterns of the schizoid more under­
standable, particularly their sudden hate arising from the feeling
of being threatened by an all-powerful intimacy without their re­
alizing that their own proj ection imbues the other with such pow­
er in the first place.
It is difficult for the schizoid person to venture into a long­
term emotional relationship. He or she tends more towards short­
term, intense but alternating connections. For them, marriage is
an institution with all the imperfections of a human construct and
thus naturally dissolvable when it is no longer experienced as sat­
isfying. According to them, it should take human needs more into
account and be adapted to them. For them, infidelity is unavoid­
able in a long-term relationship; he or she demands freedom for
themselves and is prepared - although more theoretically and not
necessarily in reality - to accord it to the partner also. Often this
person is a theoretician of marriage, a marriage reformer; at least
they venture to assert the viability of their own lifestyle against
conventions and traditions and to live according to their own
ideas. Here they often show more honesty and the courage of
their convictions than many others do. They often do enter into

Cl
Cl
... a n d l ove : 29
Cl
 long-term relationships, merely being wary of legalizing them
which is why there is a preponderance of cohabitation without
marriage. After early loss of a mother-relationship or after dis­
appointment in the mother, schizoid men often develop rela­
tionships with older, motherly women; these can help him to make
up some of what was missed in childhood. Such women can some­
times offer warmth and security without making great demands
for themselves; they are giving women who have an intuitive un­
derstanding of his situation and do not expect what he cannot
give. This can bind him more than he would normally allow. Only
the deeply disturbed with correspondingly traumatic early ex­
periences develop outspoken misogyny with impulses of revenge
against the woman. As the schizoid man in his life history has ex­
perienced the feminine as unfamiliar and threatening, it is not sel­
dom that we find him turning to the same sex; or he chooses a fe­
male partner who has almost masculine traits and does not ap­
pear to him to be " quite as different" as a very feminine woman
would be. The relationship is then often more that of a brother
and sister, or comradery; it is based more on shared interests than
on the erotic attraction of the sexes. In all relationships he finds
it hard to tolerate permanent closeness - he takes separate bed­
rooms as a matter of course, and the partner must be under­
standing about this if she does not want to drive him into a de­
fensive position and therefore force an alienation.

In summary one could say that the schizoid personality - we will

understand the reasons later - has the greatest difficulty in devel­
oping an ability to love. This type is extremely sensitive to any­
thing that threatens to limit their freedom and independence; he
or she is taciturn in expressing their emotions and is most thank­
ful when the partner can give them unobtrusive affection and a
feeling of home and security. Those who can understand how to
deal with this type can count on their deep affection even though
they are not capable of showing it or admitting to it.

30 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
 The schizoid person and aggression

ere, and in the following pages on aggression, I have pre­

H ferred to use the term aggression instead of hate, as ag­
gression is the form of expression that hate most often assumes
and its various forms can be described more plausibly. Anxiety
and aggression are closely related; it is probable that feelings of
aversion and anxiety trigger aggression, aversion being the prim­
itive' archaic form of anxiety from our earliest years. In this form,
we do not yet have the later possibilities of coping with aversion
and overcoming anxiety at our disposal but instead are at the mer­
cy of them both. What triggered them in early years were intense
frustrations such as hunger, cold, pain; disorders of the autogenic
rhythm and the integrity of the habitat; overload of the sensory
organs and limitation of freedom of movement; alienation of one's
self due to overwhelming closeness and intervention by others;
loneliness. Anxiety at this time, therefore, is in the main intense
aversion; in such situations, in a small child, anxiety and aggres­
sion occur more or less at the same time: whatever triggers aver­
sion and anxiety simultaneously triggers aggression and anger.
What does the very small child have at its disposal for coping
with anxiety and for discharging aversion ? To begin with, only
helpless anger that expresses itself in screaming, later in strug­
gling and hitting out; that is, in motor discharge and catharsis. As
there is no differentiation between Me and You in early years,
these expressions of aggression are undirected, do not refer to
anyone - they are simply a catharsis of discomfort and aversion
in order to unburden the existential orientation, to unburden the
organism. Here we can speak of the archaic form of aggression;
it is expressed elementally, spontaneously, unchecked and with­
out reference to a person, therefore, without consideration for
others and without feelings of guilt - these would presuppose an
interpersonal reference.
The intensity of archaic anxiety is enormous because it is ex­
perienced by the very small child in its complete helplessness as
a threat to its whole existence. Aggression and anger are experi­
enced correspondingly entirely - in such situations the child is

•
·
. . . a n d a gg res s i o n : 31
•
 " all anger" or " all anxiety" possessed only by the urge to act it
out, to discharge it. Thus, a reflexive constriction, a withdrawing
from the world or the outburst of reaction described above are
the two primitive forms of reaction to anxiety and aversion which
are also true for other forms of life: the flight away from danger,
withdrawing until thanatosis, or the flight towards danger, the
outburst of reaction, the attack.
If a schizoid person continues to live without emotional bonds,
he or she will continue to experience themselves as insecure, un­
protected, abandoned and threatened and will experience real or
imagined attacks and threats as endangering their entire existence.
Their reaction to this is correspondingly quite archaic in the
above-mentioned sense: immediate and ruthless aggression that
has only the goal of removing the anxiety or the anxiety trigger,
of unburdening the existential orientation - "to get it out of their
system" as is said so aptly.
One can imagine how dangerous these archaic schizoid ag­
gressions can become when they are based on a feeling of an ex­
istential threat in persons who have little acquaintance with emo­
tional ties. The aggressions are held and attached by nothing; they
are not integrated into the personality as a whole. Thus they re­
main the catharsis of an elemental and ruthless urge. As we have
seen in the case of sexuality, their aggression and their outbursts
remain isolated from the collective experience; they are dissoci­
ated' purely urge-driven catharses and are not fused into a whole
and emotional experience. As they are generally lacking in em­
pathy, there are hardly any curtailing powers available. Aggres­
sion continues to serve only as a discharge of tensions and is lived
unchecked and without feelings of guilt. In addition to this, due
to their lack of interpersonal reference, schizoid persons have no
idea of the effect of their outbursts and aggressions on others -
they have " only" got it out of their system; the other was hard-
1y of any interest to them. This is why they are often too sharp,
wounding and brusque without realizing it. The report that an
adolescent had killed a young boy was in the daily papers. Asked
what his motive had been he answered with a shrug that he didn't
have a particular reason - the boy had just somehow got on his
nerves. This is how dangerous an aggression can be that is iso-

32 : T h e s c h i z o i d per s o n
•
lated, split-off from the collective experience; it is attached to noth­
ing and comes from a readiness to hate that can be triggered by
the smallest incident. It can become independent and take on all
imaginable extreme forms, particularly when combined with a
sexual drive that is not integrated either. The " Self-portrait ofJur­
gen Bartsch" is harrowing witness to this. Bartsch sexually abused
and killed four young boys before being apprehended.
The American psychiatrist Kinzel discovered when observ­
ing prison inmates that the most violent of the men had a circle
of protection twice the size of the non-aggressive inmates. The
violent ones - we would classify them with the schizoids - would
react to the overstepping of this circle of protection, this invisi­
ble and imaginary border, with panic which immediately turned
into a ferocious attack. An impressive example of schizoid exist­
ential orientation towards the way the world is that a patient once
formulated as follows: "If someone invades my space, I start to
hate ". This is reminiscent of the reactions of some animals de­
scribed by Konrad Lorenz who attack with intense aggression
any who overstep the boundaries of their territory (Konrad
Lorenz " On aggression").
The interpersonal insecurity and lack of commitment, as well
as the mistrust arising from these factors, result in the schizoid
person experiencing the approach of another as a threat that he
or she responds to initially with anxiety immediately followed
by aggression. This basic vital feeling of the schizoid makes what
are sometimes incomprehensible reactions understandable. An ar­
chaic, non-integrated, split-off aggression can attain a degree of
violence that eliminates another person as easily as one would an
annoying insect when one feels pestered by it. As is the case with
all unattached drives that are split off from the collective experi­
ence, aggression can also become dangerously independent and
lead to asocial or criminal behaviour.
But even if we disregard such extreme examples, it is not easy
for schizoid persons to control their aggressions. They do not
generally suffer from them themselves, however, their sur­
roundings suffer all the more. What was originally a defence
against anxiety can turn into a lustful aggressiveness which is then
practised for its own sake leading to all possible forms of cruel-

III
•
" . a n d a gg res s i o n : 33
.
 ty and sadism. Brusqueness, suddenly wounding harshness, icy
coldness and unapproachableness, cynicism and a switch in a mat­
ter of seconds from affection to hostile repulse are the most com­
mon forms of expressing aggression. Here too, the "middle
tones ", the nuances of a controlled, skilled, situationally appro­
priate aggression are lacking - however, only from an external
point of view, from the experiencing of the schizoid individuals
in question, their behaviour is very much appropriate to the situ­
atlon.
In the case of schizoid persons, aggression often has another
function than that of defence and protection. In the sense of the
original meaning of the word ad-gredi to approach someone,
=

it is a means of initiating contact, often the only one available to

someone like this. Aggression, therefore, can be a form of
courtship which reminds us of the still unskilled attempts at ap­
proaching the opposite sex characteristic of puberty. There, as
with schizoid persons, we find the same mixture of anxiety and
desire, the concealing of feelings, the rough, aggressive touching
instead of the not-ventured or not-possible tenderness, the fear
of making a fool of oneself, the readiness to withdraw at any mo­
ment, the sudden turning of affection to aversion and the cyni­
cism as a result of real or imagined rejection.
In dealing with schizoid persons it is important to know that
in their case, aggressions can also have this aspect of a courtship.
Aggressiveness is easier for them than expressing affection and
other positive feelings. Due to their great gaps in interpersonal
contact, they also experience a deep insecurity in such situations.
From our psychotherapeutic work with them, we know that if
we allow them time to fill their contact gaps while at the same
time supplying constant caring, it is possible for them to integrate
their aggressions and to learn to cope with them appropriately.

34 : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
 The biographical b ack gro u nd

hat are the causes of a schizoid personality development,

W of the supervalent fear of commitment and corre­
spondingly of the supervalent emphasis on "self-rotation", on self­
preservation ?
Constitutional predispositions in this direction are a delicate
and sensitive temperament, great mental receptivity, instability
and vulnerability. One places a distance between oneself and the
environment as self-protection because physical and emotional
closeness of too great an intensity is experienced as too "loud",
due to a fine and radar-like receptivity and simultaneous perme­
ability. Therefore, distance is necessary for schizoids in order for
them to be able to face the world and life. Distance offers them
security and the protection against being taken over, overrun by
others; their temperament is like a system that is too open, too
"thin-skinned", they must, therefore, demarcate boundaries and
partially lock themselves away in order not to be overwhelmed
by the plethora of all the stimuli received.
The other possibility is that there is a particularly intense mo­
tor-expansive, aggressive-instinct foundation to the tempera­
ment' a lack of a tendency or ability to commit; these are predis­
positions that from an early age cause this person to be regarded
as irritating or annoying. Thus, such a person will repeatedly have
the experience of being rejected, rebuked, or not accepted and af­
firmed for what they are and will therefore develop the mistrustful
withdrawal of self that is so characteristic for these people and
which becomes such a typical trait.
We must also note corporeal or other characteristic traits that
do not actually belong to the constitution in the sense mentioned
here, but are still part of the physical make-up and indicate even
more clearly the environment as being a triggering factor. These
traits lead to the child disappointing the expectations and wish­
ful thinking of the parents, particularly the mother, from the very
beginning. This can be based on the fact that the child is not of
the desired sex, but also on other arbitrary physical attributes
which make it difficult for the mother to give the child the affec-

•
•
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 35
•
 tion and love that it needs at this time; unwanted children also
fall into this category.
In addition to these constitutional aspects - although the re­
action to their surroundings often tends to be more responsible
for schizoid development than does predisposition itself - there
are the environmental factors which are seen as the decisive trig­
gers of schizoid personality development. In order to understand
this better we must take a look at the situation of the child after
being born and during its first weeks of life.
In comparison to other forms of life, a human child is, for a
long time, extremely helpless and is completely dependent on its
environment. In this connection, Adolf Portmann has spoken of
human beings as being born too early.
In order for the child to be able to gradually open itself trust­
ingly to the world and can consummate the first finding of the
" other", this world must appear acceptable and inspire confidence:
acceptable in the sense of corresponding to its age-appropriate
needs. The very small child needs an atmosphere that can best be
described as secure, as safe, where it feels comfortable and pro­
tected in appropriate living conditions. The child should be al­
lowed to experience this "paradisiacal" phase of taking the ful­
filling of its needs for granted, because its ability to gradually ven­
ture to committing to life without the fear of being destroyed is
based on this primal trust.
Strangely enough, for a long time we only had very vague ideas
of the necessary living conditions for very small children; usual­
ly the differentiation and perceptual abilities of infants were
greatly underestimated as well as the effects on the child of ex­
ternal influences. The studies on newborns by the Swiss paedia­
trician Stirnimann are very impressive in this regard. Here are
some quotes from his book "Psychologie des neugeborenen
Kindes " (Psychology of the Newborn Child): " In otherwise se­
rious books . . . sensitivity to pain before the age of six weeks is
considered impossible; . . . that this is not the case I was able to
observe while giving inj ections where I could predict with the
surety of an experiment . . . that newborns began to cry before the
second inj ection on the following day when we merely began to
disinfect the area. " And on the subj ect of memory: " . . . there is a

36 : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
prenatal memory: based on the observations of the infants' nurses,
the children of women working in inns are often awake until
after midnight without crying, while the children of bakers' wives
often become restless at two or three in the morning. Through
the daily work and the nightly rest of the mother, the child had
already accustomed itself to the rhythmic alternation between
movement and rest. "
There is obviously much research still t o b e undertaken in this
direction; it emerges from these and other observations of Stirni­
mann that we have greatly underestimated the sensory, percept­
ual and emotional life of the newborn. For a long time, correct
infant nursing, nutrition and hygiene seemed to be the most im­
portant, and entirely adequate, requirements in caring for the very
small child. It is only through careful research into early child­
hood, particularly through the psychoanalysis of Freud and his
students, that we have gained completely new insights, comple­
mented by research, into behaviourism. We can thank this research
for the knowledge of the significance of the imprinting of first
impressions and early experiencing, particularly for the know­
ledge of the significance of the first weeks of life.
Goethe had already reached the same conclusion (conversa­
tion with Knebel in 18 10) when he said "A basic evil is that too
little attention is paid to the earliest education. In this, however,
lies for the most part the whole character, the whole essence of
the future human being. " Such intuitive insights remained the ex­
ception, however, and the necessary conclusions were not drawn.
Today we know that the first surroundings of the child must
also offer -- in addition to the indispensable infant care already
mentioned - emotional warmth, attention, appropriate amounts
of stimulation as well as peace and quiet and a certain stability in
its living conditions so that it can centre itself and respond trust­
ingly and openly. Of particularly great importance is that the child
experiences enough proximal tenderness.
If, in contrast, the child experiences the world as sinister and
unreliable, as empty or, on the other hand, as overwhelming and
overpowering, it will withdraw from the world and become dis­
couraged. Instead of approaching the world with trust, it will very
early in life acquire a profound mistrust. Both the emptiness of

•
·
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 37
•
 the world that the child experiences when it is left alone too of­
ten and for too long and the surfeit of stimuli and changing im­
pressions have a schizoidizing effect on it; it will become disturbed
in its first attempt to approach the world and be more or less
thrown back on itself.
In his study of children in institutions, Rene Spitz has shown
that children who were separated for too long a period from their
mothers in the first weeks of life, and therefore experiencing very
early a loss of motherly love, suffered from severe to irreparable
impairment in their development - even when nutrition was of
the best and hygienic conditions irreproachable in a home in which
there were ten children to one nurse. All children neglected at an
early age or alarmed by overstimulation will demonstrate in their
development at least: some slowness in development, unilateral­
ity, deficiency symptoms or age-inappropriate prematurity be­
cause they did not experience the living conditions necessary at
this age or not in the required measure and, therefore, were sub-
J ect to age-InapproprIate anxIetIes.
. . . . .

Such early schizoidizing disorders arise particularly easily in

children who were unwanted or unloved from the beginning; also
in the case of those who suffer long separations either because of
long periods in hospital due to sickness or because of the loss of
the mother. The same is true in the case of loveless or indifferent
mothers, of mothers who were too young and not yet mature
enough for motherhood, and is also true of the " golden cage"
children who are often left to the loveless and indifferent care of
"personnel" because the mother has "no time" for them. It is also
true of mothers who go back to work too early and leave the child
to its own devices for too long a period, they cannot give the child
what it needs at this age.
In addition to such deficiencies in loving care at a very early
age as one source of schizoid personality development is the oth­
er side of the coin: overstimulation, as is the case with mothers
who do not leave their child in peace and have no sensitivity for
its needs. This might appear to be less plausible and for this rea­
son needs closer clarification: For the beginning orientation of
the very young child it is indispensable that its environment of­
fers a certain stability which gradually becomes familiar so that

38 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
it can begin to trust it - becoming familiar with something is the
basis of being able to trust. Persons of reference that change too
often, too much variation in the surroundings and sensory im­
pressions can not be coped with by a small child; (for instance,
loud background noises such as radio and television, bright lights
up to and into the bedtime of the child, frequent and restless j our­
neys and so on). Such restlessness in surroundings and mothers
who in a manner of speaking break into the child, overrunning
its need for peace and solitude by occupying themselves with it
constantly, taking it everywhere with them and giving it no chance
to follow its own impulses, also have the effect of making the
child withdraw and close itself off, anxious and irritated. In ad­
dition to these milieus there are others that overtax the child too
early and therefore have a schizoidizing effect because they do
not allow growth to proceed organically. For instance, those in
which the child has to manoeuvre precariously between difficult
or immature adults who are unable to cope with their own diffi­
culties or their own lives . Too early it must learn to gauge moods
and understand situations in order not to overburden the simul­
taneously tense and unstable atmosphere with its own person.
Yes, it is not seldom that a child even has to take on the role of
the parent for itself as well as for the parents because they can of­
fer no support, not having any themselves. This, of course, ut­
terly overtaxes a child; before it has found itself, it is forced into
the parents' role, must be understanding of adults with the result
that it never gets around to becoming itself. It has to think in all
directions, mediate, understand and counterbalance, thus in this
way having to live the lives of others more than its own. This not
only cheats it of its childhood, but also its inner being, a feeling
of security in its own self, remains undeveloped; one of its basic
vital feelings is that of standing on unsure ground.
If this is all one knows, one endeavours to make oneself in­
vulnerable - like Siegfried bathing in dragon's blood - in order
at least to save one's face to the world. But vulnerable spots will
always remain. How to make oneself invulnerable ? Obviously
by making sure one's feelings cannot be reached, by going through
life incognito, as it were, wearing a cap of invisibility. One con­
structs a smooth fas;ade that no-one can see behind, therefore no-

•
•
The b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 39
•
 one can really get close to one. Insofar as feelings are unavoid­
able, one develops the ability to regulate them, to accept them in
doses. They are reflected upon and one learns to purposefully al­
low them or to switch them off, but will in no case abandon one­
self to them spontaneously as that could be dangerous. Once,
when the friend of a young patient told her that her parents had
complained that the patient was so cold and hostile toward them
she replied, after short consideration, "All right, I will switch my
hate off" with the result that her relations with the parents were
-

marked by even more detachment and lack of connection.

I would like to add here that as adults we still retain a thresh­
old of tolerance to sensory impressions; it is well-known that, in
those countries that avail themselves of such methods for inter­
rogations, constant noise or shining lights as well as sleep depriv­
ation can have a demoralizing effect; long-term loneliness and
darkness can also bring about similar results. Of course, the
threshold of tolerance for a small child is much lower.
Seen from this point of view, a certain significance attaches to
whether a child is breastfed or nursed with a bottle. The regular
appearance of the mother and the intimacy enj oyed by her and
the child during breastfeeding makes it possible for the child not
only to come to recognize the person on whom it can rely for the
satisfaction of all its needs, but also allows the first stirrings of
hope, of thankfulness and love directed toward one particular per­
son to emerge. In the case of the bottle-fed child, the persons of
reference might alternate and possibly also be very different from
one another in the way they interact with the child thus making
this period of development, at the least, more difficult. The bot­
tle-fed child is exposed to complex learning activities and will have
more difficulty feeling intensely committed to one person than
will the breast-fed child. If we have recognized that a lack of bond­
ing is a decisive characteristic in the emergence of schizoidia, here
one can see how the foundations can be laid by a deficit in the in­
timacy between mother and child as described above.
The consequences of all these disorders is that, from the very
beginning, the child has to defend itself against the world and
protect itself from it or otherwise be disappointed by it. If the
child can find no adequate partner in the outer world, it will fall

•
·
40 :• T h e s c h i z o i d per s o n
back on itself and take itself as a partner, thereby not sufficient­
ly consummating the step away from itself and towards others.
In its further development, and if it does not happen to experi­
ence correcting incidences, the above-mentioned gaps, the ten­
dency towards independence and egocentricity, towards self­
centredness, will be the result.
These, roughly outlined, are the environmental factors that
facilitate the development of a schizoid personality. Here we could
indicate that for the generation born just before or during the
war, this period signified the above-mentioned environmental
factors for many small children (unrest during the first weeks of
life, night-time bombings, fate as refugees, separation of the fam­
ily, loss of the home etc.). This generation has a preponderance
of schizoid features: The avoidance of family ties, the tendency
to form into groups and congregate in masses in which one can
feel a sense of belonging while remaining anonymous, and the
lack of commitment in the relations between the sexes can be
counted among them. The problem with young hooligans can be
seen in connection with this as this generation entered puberty.
Some features of modern art can also be characterized thus,
through "loss of the centre" as it was termed. Schizoid art often
gives the effect of a j olt and is also often repellent. According to
Fuhrmeister and Wiesenhiitter ("Metamusik"), after performing
mainly contemporary pieces of music, sometimes a whole or­
chestra feels ill.
But also the entire environmental situation of western civil­
ization can have a schizoidizing effect: The world offers us less
and less security; in spite of all our comforts we feel continually
more threatened and our vital awareness of life becomes unstable
due to the overabundance of stimuli to which we are subject and
against which we can protect ourselves only with difficulty; the
spectre of possible wars and the knowledge that today we are in
the position of being able to destroy ourselves utterly; the dan­
gerous feasibility and pervasiveness of biological developments
through technology and the natural sciences have given rise to a
feeling of existential threat like that which we have recognized as
being responsible for the formation of schizoid structural fea­
tures. The countermovement to this is measurable in the increasing

The b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c kg ro u n d : 41
•
 tendency toward practicing yoga and to meditative exercises. The
tangible need for a recollection of one's inner world can be rec­
ognized in the use of drugs; hippies and drop-outs want to con­
sciously renounce the achievements of technology and civiliza­
tion whose uncontrolled rule has become more and more ques­
tionable to us all. Our mastering of nature, technology which
conquers time and space, and the living conditions under which
we have to carry on our struggle for existence threaten to pro­
gressively atrophy our emotional nature more and more, so that
we can indeed speak of the schizoidizing process of western civ­
ilization.
A lack of age-appropriate security in earliest childhood is thus
a formula for the development of the schizoid personality struc­
tures insofar as they coincide with environmental factors. Whether
or not, and in what measure, prenatal and intrauterine influences
via the maternal organism have an effect has not been researched
sufficiently although it seems extremely likely. Stirnimann states
in the aforementioned book that it was possible to prove pre­
natal hearing ability: A pregnant woman stood in front of an x-ray
while a car horn was honked, this made the child j erk. Possibly,
a certain insecurity could even begin to develop in the womb via
the emotional and affective experiencing of the mother via her
emotional attitude towards pregnancy and the child if instead of
affirmation and j oyous expectation she had - for whatever rea­
son - a hostile, negative or hate-filled attitude towards the un­
born child.

E x am p les of what t he schizoid person

ex peri ences

A talented but very obstinate and almost isolated m usician was

living in difficultfinancial circumstances.An acquaintance ar­
ranged a post for him that was well paid, was with in h is area of ex­
pertise and which would have represented an important resource for
him . On the day he was to start at the newjob, which he had already
accepted, he did not show up and also declined to send in an excuse

42 : T he s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
therebyforfeiting his chance. He argued to h imself that h is friend had
only wanted to sho w off h is superiority and den igrate h is o wn m iser­
able situation - maybe he was even homosexual.

Instead, therefore, of being able to accept what had been given in

a spirit of friendship, he was afraid of becoming dependent and
of being obliged to be thankful. He had to reinterpret this for
himself by attributing to his friend questionable motives. Some­
what deeper even than this incomprehensible attitude was the fact
that he wanted to test the other: If he's really serious about help­
ing me and isn't repulsed by my behaviour, if he doesn't drop me
because of this then I really do mean something to him.
Here one can clearly see how forlorn the hope is of ever be­
ing able to escape from such a vicious circle or of ever being able
to enter into new experiences with other people. What would it
take for him to believe something is real affection ? And, on the
other hand, who would be prepared to take on such a burden and
to make the effort to understand the background of such behav­
iour ? The world does not generally have the least interest in this
sort of thing.
The situation of this man was even more complicated as he
wished with almost equal intensity that his acquaintance would
continue to care for him in spite of his behaviour and that he would
drop him. In the first case, namely, he would have to correct his
opinion of people and trust in what he wanted so badly. In the
latter, he would have been strengthened in his world view that
people are not trustworthy and would have been "justified" in
retreating full of bitterness into his heroic solitude and contempt
for the human race, which would have been more comfortable
for him.
This musician continually changed girlfriends whom he usu­
ally abandoned quite soon as he didn't like the way that one
dressed, the legs of another one and the education of a third and
so on. These were rationalizations for his fear of commitment
and at the same time protection against perhaps coming to love
someone after all, thus exposing himself to all the dangers inher­
ent in "loving". Here we will just mention the biographical de­
tail that he was an illegitimate child who was handed around to

"
ID

E x a m p les : 43
ID
 various relatives while young and was felt by them to be a bur­
den. A further example of this personality structure:

A middle -aged man experienced h imself again and again in the tor­
menting role of an outsider. He had the feeling of not really belonging
anywhere and thought that other people regarded him with repulsion
or ironically and critically. He suffered m uch because of this, it made
himfeel insecure and h is professional career threatened to collapse be­
ca use others saw him as alien and "extremely difficult ". In his reaction
to this, in a classical an dfa teful vicious circle, he really did become more
difficult to deal with. He would often suddenly became abusive with ­
out apparent motive, would be cuttingly sarcastic to h is superiors or
"cut " his colleagues without reason . He became so conspicuous in his
dress and behaviour that people distanced themselves more and more
and wanted to have nothing more to do with him.

Because of this increasing distance and isolation he not only pro­

jected much onto his environment but, as is often the case in reci­
procity, his environment in turn proj ected just as much onto him
in the way that we all have the tendency to proj ect our own prob­
lems and non-integrated, unconscious parts of our soul onto
strange, unfamiliar or sinister appearances. Thus he took on more
and more the character of the black sheep, of the scapegoat of the
respective collectives in which he lived and worked. As one did
not really know him, his colleagues found him somehow weird
without ever bothering to examine the reason for their rejection
of him. Soon, therefore, rumours began to circulate about him:
maybe he wasn't "quite all there"; maybe there was something
wrong with his sexuality; maybe he was not politically reliable
and so on and so forth. In short, he seemed suspect without any­
one being clear as to how or why. That they were projecting un­
solved problems onto him was not clear to anyone. Nothing of
all this was ever mentioned to him; he only felt the growing and
incomprehensible distance between himself and others, occa­
sionally caught a glimpse of a mistrustful look or saw others ex­
changing meaningful glances for reasons he could not fathom -
in short, a reciprocal escalation of negativity on both sides cre­
ated a vicious circle that became insoluble .

44 : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
 I would now like to go into the biographical background of this
man in more depth in order to show how the seeds of his schizoidia
were laid which led to his later social and interpersonal difficul­
ties and which he did not recognize as being in any way connect­
ed to them; he only saw his difficulties as mysterious and fateful.

He came from an un usual milieu. His father was a tra vel writer and,
during the early childhood of h is son, h is only child, was very success ­
ful. He earned a lot of money at that time, lived in luxury and gave wild
parties. The mother revelled in this social wh irl and luxury and had lit­
tle time for the ch ild - in truth, little interest and love. He was, there -
fore, left mainly to the attentions of a housemaid a n d later, still a t a
very early age, to those of a black servant. He seems to remem ber that
at least they were not overtly unfriendly toward him .
When he was five years old, his parents divorced. O n e could not
call their marriage a true partnership as both parties - they thought
th is was modern and a sign of liberal sophistication - had several in ­
timate affairs with other partners. He remained with h is father and
was merely informed that his mother was leaving {for a long time "
without anything else being said. Soon afterwards - he did not fin d
out about this until m uch later - his mother went into a psych iatric
clin ic to be treatedfor a mental illness. We can inferfrom this that she
was not mentally healthy beforehand either. Shortly after the divorce
the father married one of h is mother's sisters - it was h is th ird mar­
riage. This stepmother n ursed hatred against her sister who had al­
ways been the fa vourite at home. When the boy was fifteen she com ­
m itted suicide and the father married for the fourth time.
Mr. X gre w up in th is milieu. He always felt like the fifth wheel on a
wagon; n o -one really paid h im any attention; he had the feeling from
an early age that he was a n uisance, basically superfluous and ultim ­
ately un wanted. Th is was magnified by the following situation: His
parents ' house lay outside the city on an isolated hillside in afairly un ­
inhabited area so that the boy had no playmates nearby. The father,
who was a loner, drank often and had an un usual lifestyle; he turned
night into day, worked only at night and slept during the day so that
his son rarely sa w him; he was also often awayfor weeks at a time. He
did not th ink m uch of collective systems and made fun of them as be­
ing only fit for the stupid and the weak.

41
41

E x a m p les : 45
41
 Th us the son, when he came of school age, was not sent to school
but had private lessons at homefrom - once againfrequently chang ­
ing - tutors. He was not sent to school until he was ten years old. Now
his first contact difficulties became apparent, hardly surprising con ­
sidering the course h is life had taken so far. He had literally never had
experiences with people of h is own age before and had never experi­
enced being part of a com m unity. Beca use of h is insecurity he now
searched for a role that he could play in class and behind wh ich he
could h ide himself As he had formerly, in some situations where he
had inadvertently been funny, experienced sympathy and bene volent
laughter, he became the class clown to begin with and later what we
would now call a hooligan. He courted the sympathy of h is schoolfel­
lows by ridiculing everything, making fun of the teachers, being im ­
pervious to warnings and punishments and playing truantfrom school.
Hisfatherfoundthis all rather am using than otherwise due to his afore­
mentioned attitude so that he e ven won some fatherly sympathy -
his father was proud that h is son bowed to collective systems as little
as he h imself did.
However, in spite of his yearning for them, friendly contacts still
remain ed elusive beca use although others found him interesting and
am using he was nevertheless seen as a somewhat peculiar outsider.
As he was very talented and clever, he won a certain amount of recog ­
n ition from h is schoolfellows but had no real friends.
When he was 1 2 years old, what he later called h is "great illness "
began: Slender, pale, tall and susceptible to sickness as he was, his step­
mother had him abstain from school sports andforbade h im any oth ­
er kind of sport "beca use ofyour heart and because you have shot up
too fast ". The result was, among other things, that he was unable to
develop a healthy somaesthesia, a feeling for his o wn body, did not
feel at home in it and showed the characteristic features of th is situ ­
ation of inh ibition and awkwardness; here therefore, afurther oppor­
tunity ofpossible contact, ofphysical proximity and healthy rivalry was
negated.
His stepmother, hiding her antipathy behind over-protectiveness,
dragged him from doctor to doctor. He had to remain in bed for long
periods without anything specific having beenfound wrong with him.
The doctors played th is game until one of them managed tofind a la ­
tent tuberculosis. Now,for o vertwoyears he was confined to his room,

46 : The s c h i z o i d per s o n
•
and most ofthe time even to his bed. D uring this time he read an enor­
mous n um ber of books, indiscriminately, whatever he could lay his
hands onfrom h isfather's well-stocked library. During th is treatment
he once said very percipiently of himself: "Em otionally I am ten years
yo unger th an intellectually " wh ich is a typical statem ent from a
schizoid personality. "I don 't know ifl am homosexual or heterosexual "
was another of h is comments expressing the insecurity of h is sexual
feelings.
He did n ot return to school until he was overfourteen, and this sec­
ond attempt was no happier than the first with regard to establishing
contacts. The twoyears ofisolation, particularly during puberty, which
he had spent separatedfrom people of h is o wn age and during wh ich,
lacking a partner, he was dependent on h is own imagination, had un ­
derstandably thrown h im back upon h imself e ven more and magni-
fied his difficulties in comm unication . Again, he was regarded by oth ­
ers as an alien presence - moreover, h e entered a class that had al­
ready been togetherfor some years and had gro wn close.
In a test questionnaire dealing with career aspirations the fifteen -
year-old wrote "professional smoker". People reacted with annoyance
to this teenage sarcasm and did not see the need and helplessness be ­
hind it did not understan d h is behaviour as a signal to h is surround­
ings. When he became a student, hejoined a duellingfraternity - some­
thing not really in characterfor him but a new attempt "to belong ': to
measure h imself with those of h is own age and to be seen as mascu­
line. For the same reasons he volunteered for the army b ut here also
he remained the odd man out often giving others ca use to ridicule
him, albeit good-naturedly,for his clumsiness.
After lea ving the army he contin ued h is studies; he studied h is ­
tory, lang uages and literature. After graduating he became a teacher
and became a recogn ized specialist kno wn as a loner who was only
at home in the world of books. The students appreciated h is profound
kno wledge andforga ve h im his weaknesses. When he was 24 h e mar­
ried, or, it m ight better be said, someone married h im . The woman
soon complained that he was more interested in h is books and h is
studies than in her - wh ich he did not understan d at all, he was giv­
ing her all the affection he was capable of giving. He, on h is part was
also disappointed that she entered so little into h is intellectual world
and h is interests. This resulted in infidelity on both sides early on in

E x a m p l es : 47
•
 the marriage, on h is part these were also homosexual experiences to
wh ich he responded with severe feelings of g uilt an d reactions bor­
dering on a persecution mania wh ich finally brought h im to psy­
chotherapy.

This biography contains much that is typical with regard to the

background life history of schizoid personality development: too
great a distance to others, disinterest and irregular availability of
the persons of reference from the word go; furthermore, a lack
of proximal tenderness and understanding for the needs of the
child. In addition to this there is the lack of guidance and being
left to deal with important phases of development on one's own;
too little contact and shared experiences with peers, too little af­
filiation with groups, with communities. Insufficient opportuni­
ties for development of the emotional side, for being able to trust.
All this allows gaps to develop in the interaction with others, and
there is a lack of being able to cope with the technicalities of life
which always throws one back upon oneself. The reactions of the
world to such a personality cast such people even more in the role
of the outsider.
One can therefore understand that from a beginning such as
this, one of the basic forms of anxiety develops: the fear of com­
mitment and closeness that correspondingly allows the impulse
of safeguarding the self to be supervalent and which makes au­
tarky appear to be the only possibility for self-preservation. Now,
as it were, the schizoid makes a virtue of necessity by raising his
or her loneliness to a value. This can escalate to extreme forms of
narcissism and to an embittered hostility against all and every­
thing, to a contempt for the human race, to cynicism and nihilism.
Behind all this, meanwhile, noticed by none and kept anxiously
hidden, is a deep yearning for closeness, for trust, for loving and
being loved. One can understand that on this basis the develop­
ment can easily slide into the asocial and criminal - sometimes
only a single additional trigger is necessary. The incremental na­
ture of schizoid behaviour patterns, from initial mistrust through
rej ection, indifference and coldness to hate and contempt, is usu­
ally the reaction to the experiences of their environment which
leads to the vicious circle described above .

48 : The s c h i z o i d per s o n
•
 One more brief example, a self-description, which describes
in a particularly vivid way the lack of an emotional orientation
to making contact and the attempt to substitute rational means
of orientation for it - a schizoid patient once said, " I always
have the impression that in cases where others react straight from
their feelings, in my case it rapidly becomes a series of switch-
. "
Ing gears.
An excellent description of how, in the case of schizoid per­
sons, the immature emotional capacity is replaced by intellectual
alertness and a radar-like sensitivity of the sensory organs and
thinking processes - the " switching gears".
Severe stresses and conflicts that they are unable to cope with '
are then manifested in bodily symptoms; corresponding to the
problem, it is particularly the sensory organs as well as the or­
gans of contact and exchange that are affected - the skin and
breathing. Asthmatic symptoms and eczema can be classed here,
often emerging at a very early age. The skin is the organ that brings
us into contact with the world while at the same time demarcat­
ing us from it and it is here that the contact difficulties of schizoid
persons are expressed most readily - in circulatory disorders,
psoriasis, sweating and so on.

S u m m ing u p

o sum up once again: In the case of schizoid or " split" per­

T sonalities, the integral experiential context of his or her
emotional impressions, drives and reactions has been disrupted
to varying degrees. Particularly the vital impulses are isolated and
disassociated from emotional experiencing. In their case, in oth­
er words, the integration of the various layers of experience or
personality has not been successfully fused. Particularly between
understanding and feeling, between rationality and emotionali­
ty' there is a great difference in the degree of maturation; emo­
tional processes and intellectual experiences take place more or
less separately and do not merge into a unified experiencing. From
an early age schizoid personalities have had to orient themselves

•
•
Summing up : 49
•
 via their understanding and sensory apparatus because they did
not learn sufficient emotional orientation. Thus they have no nu­
ances of feeling at their disposal; they are only acquainted with
the primitive pre-forms of feeling - the affects; it is as though on
their palette of possibilities of expression the middle shades are
missing and only extreme black and white are available. All this
is the result of a deficiency in emotional interpersonal ties.
As protection against their fear of closeness, schizoids attempt
to achieve the greatest measure of independence. However, such
a tendency toward autarky and their avoidance of close ties
makes, the rotation around themselves and an increasing ego­
centricity unavoidable, which then drives them ever further into
isolation. One can understand that people like this experience the
most intense anxiety there is, as loneliness and isolation magni­
fy feelings of anxiety; particularly their fear of becoming insane
can increase to intolerable proportions. Here too the experienc­
ing of being-different-from-others and the feeling of the world
being an insecure place are reflected. One of these patients once
said, "Fear is the only reality that / know ". Characteristically, he
could not describe his anxiety as a fear of something in particu-
1ar' of something tangible, he experienced it as an entirety. And
yet another, "/ don 't know fear; something in me somewhere is
probably afraid but this fear is not in my ego ". He had disassoci-
ated himself so completely from his anxiety that it appeared to
have disappeared from his consciousness; but one can imagine
how unstable such a situation is, how easily the ego can be over­
whelmed by the split-off anxiety.
Just being able to communicate an anxiety brings some relief;
however, if one never dares to do this because one is afraid of sur­
rendering something of oneself to others or is afraid of being
thought insane if one were to show oneself in all one's weakness
and vulnerability, then fear accumulating over a long period can
reach an intensity that is no longer bearable. Then the anxiety can
break out, even becoming a psychosis in a last desperate attempt
to flee from it. One is "insane", moves away from normal stand­
ards, and finds refuge in an unreal world in which one is healthy
and the outside world is insane - which in some cases could even
be true. One shifts one's anxieties onto objects in the outside world

so : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
where they can be more easily avoided, fought or removed; but
there is no escape from inner anxiety.
With growing autism, the schizoid person increasingly loses
interest in the world and the people in it; a process that has been
called obj ect loss and is described by such people themselves as
an apocalyptic experience. Namely, if one loses an interested em­
pathy with the world and one's emotional attention to it and in­
creasingly withdraws oneself, then the world becomes impover­
ished, it " comes to an end", becomes nothing, is destroyed. Such
a vital sense is often expressed in the dreams of schizoid persons:

{(/find myseIJon a large rotating plate like those at thefair wh ich spins
faster and faster; / can hardly hold on any more and am sliding clos ­
er and closer to the edge and could be flung out into n othingness at
any second. "

Or:
(� fort with walls of cement with afe w tiny spyholes in the m idst ofa
h uge sandy desert; the fort is heavily armed and stocked with foodfor
years; / Iive in it alone. "

The loneliness, the shielding, the defence against anxiety and need
for autarky could scarcely be described more succinctly.
One could hardly find more concise illustrations for the
schizoid experience of-being-in-the-world than are to be found
in such dreams. A similar mood appears to have been shared by
Maxim Gorky who had a difficult childhood and was forced to
leave home very early, roaming the country in search of ways to
earn money. Once, when he visited Tolstoy, he described a dream
to him in which he had seen a pair of boots marching along one
of the endless wintry Russian roads - only the boots. One can
not describe loneliness more pithily than this.
The removing-oneself-from-the-world and withdrawing­
into-oneself, therefore, lead gradually to world loss which is ex­
perienced with great anxiety as a falling into nothing, into ab­
solute emptiness, as in the dream with the spinning plate. Often,
in the case of schizoid personalities, ideas of anxiety and dreams
can also take the form of world disasters of an apocalyptic kind.

•
•
Summing u p : 51
•
 Whoever wants to hold onto him or herself so fast threatens to
lose the world so that in the end they appear to themselves to be
alone in existence.
Let us use some examples to describe the results that arise from
fear of closeness and the supervalent " self-rotation". The mis­
trustful alertness that occurs increasingly threatens to become a
pathological self-referentiality; such people begin to hear "the
grass grow" as the saying is, or "the fleas cough", meaning that
they suspect a threat always and everywhere and ascribe ominous
motives to the most harmless comment.

Once, when I had moved a picture in my practice to another wall, a

schizoid patient immediately imagined that I had a motive with re ­
gard to him, that I had wanted to test h is reaction to the change.

What is noticeable in this example, in addition to this almost para­

noid self-referentiality, is with what meticulous sensory atten­
tion schizoids usually perceive the tiniest changes in the world
around them, changes that others would overlook. In their world­
orientation they are almost entirely dependent on their sensory
perceptions and this is why they are honed to such sharpness.

On another occasion, when the telephone rang a couple of times dur­

ing a therapy hour, the same patient thought I had ordered these calls
in order to check how he would react to the disturbance.

If one sets more or less everything that one notices in the world
in reference to oneself - which no-one with more contact and
more vital relations to the human environment would dream of
doing - one is increasingly subj ect to delusions of reference and
interpretation which can be built up into an actual delusional sys­
tem which can no longer be treated. In this case, one no longer
encounters anything or anyone coincidentally, nothing happens
that is not in secret reference to oneself and of special significance
which one must then endeavour to find out.
This is, naturally, extremely tormenting and disturbing; not
only does one lose all unaffectedness, one is also constantly on
the " qui vive ? ", always prepared to shield oneself against sudden
surprises and supposed dangers. Therefore, one stretches out one's

52 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
antennae only very cautiously to the world, like a snail, always
prepared to draw back immediately if someone approaches too
closely.
We can even recognize the rudiments of such delusions of ref­
erence in ourselves in emotionally fraught times, or when we have
anxieties or feelings of guilt that have not been dealt with. Some­
one, for instance, who disapproved of the Nazi party and those
in authority during the Third Reich and who had expressed his
or her disapprobation could easily begin to suffer from a mild
feeling of persecution, seeing in every SA or SS officer a danger­
ous enemy who might have heard from a denouncer what one
had said, or who knew of something else that would be enough
to have one arrested and carried off to a concentration camp. Lone­
liness and isolation as well as human insecurity and real dangers
facilitate delusional reactions. If you are alone at night in a strange
house, perhaps even in a strange land, and hear unfamiliar noises
you will tend more easily toward interpreting them erroneously
and delusionally - particularly if you are emotionally upset or
prey to anxiety or guilt - than if you found yourself relaxed and
in the secure society of familiar people. Thus the delusions of ref­
erence of the schizoid person reveal once again their basic pro b­
lem: their isolation and lack of human security. At the same time,
the examples show how fine the line is between the healthy and
the ill and how we can exhibit reactions in exceptional situations
that are usually only manifested by the ill. For a long time these
ill persons have lived under exceptional conditions in which they
developed their "pathological" reactions - had to develop them
- as self-protection.
Another example of how a different schizoid patient coped
with his suppressed yearning for contact and his need for ten­
derness:

A very lonely man in h is late twenties, almost without h uman contacts,

was sitting in a concert hall next to a young man who exerted an ex­
traordinary attraction on h im. He kept glancing at th is young man
covertly from the side and felt an increasing desire to establish con ­
tact with h im, to speak to him. Un used to dealing with people and with
his own impulses, he was gripped by a growing anxiety that started

11
•
Summing up : 53
•
 off uncertainly but rose to a pan ic when he thought he could see
coloured circles emanating from the young man that were trying to
loop around him as if the other were attempting to encircle, to cap ­
ture him . He broke out in a cold sweat and he had to leave the concert
hall at a run.

Here one can clearly see how the suppressed wish for contact,
for tenderness, and behind these a homosexual inclination that
he was incapable of venturing to indicate or communicate to the
other man, was now projected onto the other, as if the other had
wanted to take possession of him. Here also the situation is more
or less insane, the inner anxiety is transferred onto an external
threat which can only be dealt with by fleeing from it. If one is
so unstable and unprotected, at the mercy of the world internal­
ly and externally, one can understand that schizoid persons at­
tempt to develop a technology for living that does not allow any­
thing to really touch them any more and which makes it pos­
sible to remain untouched and unmoved, always businesslike,
detached and if possible with a feeling of superiority, unflappable
but also unreachable by any means. This way of living can attain
all degrees of cool distance, arrogance, and aloofness up to icy
coldness and callousness or, if these protective measures are no
longer sufficient, to sudden fierceness and explosive aggression
such as we have described. Here the respective environments can
represent a real help for the schizoid person if they can learn the
reasons for their behaviour and if they can understand from what
inner distress their behaviour patterns stem.
Working in therapy with schizoid persons, one comes into con­
tact with borderline situations that illuminate the hazard of hu­
man existence. It is for just this reason that we can learn from
them what is existentially vital for a human being and, on the oth­
er hand, what familial and social environmental factors can en­
danger our development to such a degree that they can only be
counterbalanced with great difficulty, if at all. Very gifted people
can sometimes develop in spite of such a background by accept­
ing the feeling of being totally in question - in which context we
have indicated the often very fine line dividing genius and psy­
chosis. This much is certain: If these people are capable of sur-

54 : T h e s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
viving and overcoming their suffering and their anxieties, they
can achieve the highest human potential.
Here we must emphasize that schizoid features can take on
extremely varying degrees of intensity. If we would attempt to
list schizoid personalities from the still definitely healthy to the
slightly and more severely disturbed to the very disturbed, we
would have a list like this: slightly contact inhibited - overly sen­
sitive - loners - originals - misfits - eccentrics - weirdos - out­
siders - asocials - criminals - psychotics. There are often talent­
ed geniuses among them. With the genius, loneliness and de­
tachment have a positive effect because they are more free of
traditions and considerations and can thus recognize things that
the secure and tradition-bound do not see, or do not dare to see.
Their exposed situation allows them to achieve insights that over­
step boundaries from which others respectfully keep their dis­
tance. If their emotional life is not impoverished but only timid-
1y withdrawn, schizoids can be very differentiated and sensitive
people who have a profound dislike of everything banal and shal­
low. It is only in the case of emotional flattening and callousness
that they do not quite achieve true humanity.
In their relationship to religion, schizoids are usually sceptics,
often cynics, quick to point out the " absurdity" of belief, critical
toward rites, traditions and anything formalistic. Generally, they
enjoy disenchanting and disillusioning others going as far as ir­
reverent " explanations" of the inexplicable. The present time with
its orientation to enlightenment and the natural sciences offers
plenty of opportunities for this debunking. Thus they are often
the rationalists among us, lacking the ability to experience some
areas, which is why one cannot discuss these areas with them.
However, it often seems as though this attitude towards reli­
gion or belief is also a subconscious disappointment prophylax­
is: They do not dare to believe in order not to be disappointed
and are secretly waiting for the " proof" that could persuade them.
Sometimes they can be nihilistic and destructive and take diabolic
enjoyment in destroying the faith of others. But in the endeav­
our to convert others to their own disbelief one can again recog­
nize the ambivalence of their attitude; perhaps they just do not
want to be left alone with their lack of faith. Having never experi-

•
•
Summing up :• SS
 enced security and love, the severely disturbed among them can
not find a way to believe and tend therefore toward atheism. They
often make themselves the standard by which everything is meas­
ured, which can lead to megalomaniac arrogance and to auto­
divinization. It is as though this withdrawing of their interest from
the world and the increasingly exclusive turning of their atten­
tion to their own person gives these a power and a significance
that gradually permeates their whole consciousness. However,
some of these persons can seek and find in religion the never-ex­
perienced security; this will not be a childlike faith and also not
a belief in a personal and loving God. Rather, it will be the ac­
ceptance of something superpersonally unfathomable that they
correlate with the dignity of the conditionally free individual and
the consciousness of being human that will be compelling.
For schizoids, ethics and morals appear rather questionable.
They do not think much of challenges that burden the type of
person that he or she happens to be by precipitating feelings of
guilt. Due to their lack of interpersonal relationships such per­
sons are less socially adapted; they live egocentrically, emphasiz­
ing the self-protective aspects and evaluate life according to what
is appropriate to them. Thus they can develop what Nietzsche
called a "Herrenmoral" (morality of the masters) which only per­
tains to themselves and is full of contempt for the "weaklings"
who feel bound by ethical scruples that appear to them to be based
mainly on cowardice and lack of courage in seeking autonomous
independence. If the schizoid has a strong personality, they will
live autonomously. For them, the saying - with all its inherent
possibilities and dangers - "the strong are strongest alone" is true.
Only the strong have the power to make a virtue out of what they
have very early become conscious of: that they are different, as
illustrated in this chapter. The weaker and more fragile withdraw
from the world while continuing to observe it, seeking to find
balance in constructing a private world in order not to be de­
pendent on others. A conspicuous, almost exclusive attention to
animals or to dead matter can be the result of this. If they are
deeply disturbed, people like this often have a destructive-cor­
rosive effect, become antisocial and exploit others ruthlessly for
their own ends.

56 : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
.
 Schizoid parents and teachers do not give the child enough
warmth; they remain too detached, cannot adequately accept and
respond to the emotional needs of the child and often ridicule
any emotional expression. They make the child feel slightly in­
secure by seeing through it and ascribing psychological motives
to it at a young age, thereby forcing the child too early into self­
reflection. It feels chilled in their proximity and is disturbed by
their abrupt reactions that are difficult for it to comprehend, keep­
ing it in a constant state of alertness. In their company the child
finds little opportunity for loving identification, they are too un­
approachable for the child. With very small children, however,
they often have good relations as they are able to be tender to­
ward them. Later they hide their affection behind mocking irony
which makes it difficult for the child to have the feeling that its
love is something of value, that it could mean something to some­
one else, as it never feels that its feelings are taken seriously. ("Oh,
my honoured son has suddenly succumbed to an access of affec­
tion "; "Madam daughter must want something, she is being so
nice to me today ".)
Because of their inner structure they prefer professions that
do not bring them into contact with others. They have a propen­
sity to choose theoretical-abstract fields. Among them one can
very often find meticulous natural scientists, astronomers, physi­
cists' mathematicians and engineers. If they deal with people on
a scientific basis, then this is usually indirectly, by circuitous
routes: via psychological testing, with microscope and x-ray ap­
paratus or, as in pathology, via corpses. In their case the soul eas­
ily becomes an accumulation of physiological reflexes and they
can say, with Schopenhauer: "Dear God, if there is a god, save
my soul, if I have one". Their psychology often has something
that wants to reveal, to disclose. As doctors they are more the re­
searchers than the therapists, often with a particular relationship
to psychiatry and the borderline sciences; as theologists they tend
more toward religious science than to practicing as clergymen.
They often turn their back on people and devote themselves to
animals, plants and stones, discovering the world micro- and
macroscopically with the improved sensory organs of microscope
and telescope.

..
Cl
Summing up : 57
Cl
 One can imagine how dangerous knowledge and opportun­
ities for power can be in the hands of a severely schizoid scientist
who, bound by no human ties, only lives autistically for his or
her own ideas, striving to realize them. In addition to the deter­
minations of disposition and talent, the choice of profession is
often motivated in schizoid persons by the search for a field in
which they hope for reliable findings, unclouded by subjective
emotions. As philosophers they are often the abstract thinkers,
far removed from everyday life as generally they are more drawn
to theory than to practise.
In politics they prefer to represent revolutionary to anarchis­
tic elements, pronounced and extreme points of view, radicalism;
or they can be politically disinterested - politics "is not for me"
they say from their solipsistic standpoint; the community, of what­
ever kind, does not interest them.
In art they are more interested in abstract-unrepresentational
positioning, they attempt to present their complex inner experi­
ences and tend to express them in cipher or symbolically; or
they can be the sharp critics, satirists and caricaturists . Their
style is usually individual, unconventional, at any rate original
and sometimes trendsetting. If, in their lack of reference, they
do not address a certain public but express human and funda­
mental issues over their own concerns, they can trigger new de­
velopments. They often grasp psychological-atmospheric issues,
allude to the unutterable and intrude into regions avoided or
not seen by others, so that their works can deepen our under­
standing of humankind. They are seldom popular while still
living.
Their profession is often just a j ob to them because ultimate­
ly it is unimportant to them how they earn their daily bread -
they lead their real lives outside their career, here one finds their
enthusiasms and hobbies. They also like to take up professions
where solitude is a factor and which demand little interpersonal
contact. Their preoccupation with the world of animals, plants
and minerals in any form is not rare. They often gravitate to pro­
fessions such as electrician, traffic administrator and others that
in an abstract way, as it were, unconsciously and symbolically fill
the need for contact and attachment .

58 : The s c h i z o i d pers o n
•
 Schizoid people with charisma can often trigger great up­
heavals, can be pioneers and initiators. These people - who ex­
perience most intensely the questionability of human existence -
comprehend things, experience infernos and suffer borderline
states in their loneliness and exile that those who live in more se-
curIty cannot even ImagIne.
. . .

Age can make them even more isolated and eccentric. Some,
however, become wiser. Generally one can say that schizoid per­
sons understand how to become older better than others; thanks
to their being accustomed to independence and isolation they can
cope better with loneliness. They have constructed a world for
themselves early on in which they can live without being too de­
pendent on interpersonal sympathy. They have less fear of death,
accepting it unsentimentally and stoically as a fact. As they have
not invested very much in the world and in other people, they
have less to lose and to relinquish; they are not particularly
strongly attached to anything, not even to themselves and can
therefore let go much more easily.
The positive aspects of schizoid persons is shown in their sov­
ereign self-reliance and independence, in the courage of their con­
victions and of the autonomy of the individual. The gift of keen
observation, a dispassionate and cool objectivity, a critical and in­
corruptible view of the facts, courage to see things as they are
without mitigatory or extenuating trimmings are among their
strengths. They are the ones leas t constricted by traditions and
dogmas of any kind, they are not dependent on anything, do not
undertake anything without first having tested it and thought it
through. Unsentimental as they are, they hate ardour, ambigu­
ity and mawkishness. They present their convictions clearly and
without compromise and have their own independent opinion
on everything. They also usually have an ironic and satirical side
and a sharp eye for the weaknesses of others; it is therefore dif­
ficult to hoodwink them and they are often felt to be "inconveni­
ent" in interpersonal contacts as they are rarely prepared to ac­
cept spuriousness and false fronts. They believe in their capabil­
ities and are able to live to a large extent without illusions; they
want to master fate, destiny is something to be overcome - they
see the individual as the creator of his or her own fate.

•
•
Summing u p : 59
•
 One should also mention the schizoid persons who have a
strongly schizoid structure but who do not suffer from it, there­
fore seeing themselves as healthy. They affirm their autarky and
lack of ties as a value and live them at the expense of others, who
suffer from their lack of consideration. Here we can class many
of those in power or those people who generally have others at
their command and who exploit them ruthlessly for their own
ends - this springs from a deep contempt for others.
If here, and in the following pages, the "positive" representa­
tives of the individual structure types appear to be described too
summarily, it is because the principle of the four personality struc­
tures can be illustrated best by the marginal forms. I hope that
no-one will deduce a judgement from this; each structure has its
own potential for developing to a high level.
What is most important for the schizoid person is not to neg­
lect the counterpoint to his or her striving for self-protection and
autarky, that is, the aspect of surrendering the self, but to inte­
grate it for the supplementation in the measure necessary so that
the one-sided and supervalent " self-rotation" does not become
absolute and drive them into pathological isolation which causes
the loss of all ties. " It is not good that man should be alone".
People with no ties become inhuman all too easily. As we will see
in the last chapter, there is a tendency in all four personality struc­
tures for fascination with the respective opposite type. In this I
would like to see our subconscious drive to completion, to lib­
eration of pathological one-sidedness; as we cannot simply leave
out one of the four basic impulses and avoid the corresponding
anxiety without damage to ourselves. In venturing to turn to­
wards others with trust, in venturing into self-forgetting lies that
which can help us out of our endangering isolation and can offer
the chance to experience ties not only as burdens, fetters and dan­
gers but instead as a being-held, as a sharing of experience and
development and as an extension of our ego-limitation through
a partner.

60 : T h e s c h i z o i d per s o n
•
 Fear of sel f- becoming
The de pressi ve pe rsonal ities

" Fo r get y o u r ego, b u t n eve r l o se yo u r s e l f"

H e rd e r

Ow let us turn to the second basic form of anxiety, the fear

N of becoming an independent ego, which is deeply experienced
as a falling away from security. Seen from the viewpoint of our
basic impulses, these are the people who, according to our alle­
gory, live the "revolution" supervalently, that is, the movement
around a larger centre and who wish to avoid " self-rotation"; this
we call the aspect of commitment in the broadest sense.
The desire for close and intimate contact, the yearning to love
and be loved is part of our being and is one of the fundamental
characteristics of being human. When we love someone, we have
the desire to make the loved person happy; we empathize with
them, want to guess their wishes, think of them more than we
think of ourselves, can forget about ourselves and experience the
delightful exchange of give-and-take which lets us merge with
the other to become a "we" and suspends the separateness of the
individual, at least momentarily. The primal image of such love
is the mother-child relationship and perhaps all love endeavours
to re-create, rediscover what we experienced in early childhood:
to feel ourselves loved unconditionally just for what we are and
to experience that our being, what we have to give, what we are
also makes the other happy. We bring the ability to love with us
as a predisposition but it must be addressed, awoken, in order to
develop. Thus, received love gives us a feeling of our own worth

..

Fea r of s e l f- bec o m i n g : 61
..
..
 as well as making possible our own ability to love, which wants
to return what it has received. Now we should consider what
would happen if a person, avoiding self-becoming, attempts to
live mainly through ego-abandonment and commitment.
The first consequence would be that the other, the respective
partner, becomes supervalent. A loving wanting-to-give-oneself
necessitates a partner, is bound to the being of another person
and is not possible without him or her. Thus a dependency has
already been established and this is the central problem for the
type of person whom we will call depressive: they are more de­
pendent than others on a partner; be it because of their ability to
love and preparedness to love, be it because of their need for be­
ing loved - two aspects which can be brought together in the words
of Erich Fromm from his book "The Art of Loving" in the two
sentences " I need you because I love you" and " I love you be­
cause I need you". On the one hand one needs someone in order
to love them, in order to use one's ability to love; or one needs
someone because one wants to be loved by them and has needs
that one believes unable to fulfil oneself.
If, therefore, a person needs someone else so urgently, he or
she will strive to remove as much of the separating distance be­
tween them as possible. People like this are tortured by the chasm
between I and Thou - the distance which the schizoid needs so
desperately and endeavours to sustain as self-protection. In com­
parison, the depressive wants to be as close as possible to the Thou,
and to stay there. The less " self-rotation" they have developed,
the more they experience any distance, any removal and separa­
tion from a partner, with anxiety and will attempt to prevent it.
For them distance means being forsaken and abandoned, and this
can lead to profound depression and desperation.
What can one do in order to avoid being subject to the tor­
menting fear of loss and separation? The only remedy would be to
develop so much autonomy and independence that one would not
be so utterly dependent on a partner. But this is just what is so dif­
ficult for a depressive, because then of course they must loosen the
close ties to the other and this would immediately trigger the fear
of loss again. Thus they search for other securities that might solve
the problem but, as we will see, that ultimately only make it worse.

62 : The d e p res s ive p e r s o n a l i t i e s

•
 To the depressive, dependency appears to offer such security;
either by becoming dependent on someone or making the other
dependent on them. Whoever is dependent on someone else
needs them, and needing someone bears the semblance of a cer­
tain guarantee, a guarantee of not being forsaken.
The only possibility, therefore, appears to be binding some­
one fast to oneself by remaining childishly helpless and depend­
ent on him or her in order to demonstrate that one must not be
abandoned - who could be so hard and loveless as to leave a help­
less creature ? The other possibility seems to lie in making the oth­
er so dependent on one that one turns them into the child, as it
were; then we have the mirror image of the preceding one with a
contrasting emphasis - but the motive is the same: to establish a
dependency.
In the case of depressive personalities, the fear of loss is the
dominating one in its various manifestations as fear of isolating
distance, of separation, insecurity and loneliness, of being for­
saken. These personalities seek the greatest possible closeness and
attachment as the above-mentioned schizoid countertypes seek
the greatest possible distance and freedom in order to protect
themselves from their anxiety. If closeness means for the depres­
sive: safety and security, for the schizoid it means: threat and re­
striction of their autarky; if distance means for the schizoid: se­
curity and independence, for the depressive it means: endanger­
ment and being forsaken.
If the depressive recognizes that self-becoming - individua­
tion - unavoidably signifies a separating "being-different" , he or
she will either renounce it for themselve's or not allow it to mani­
fest in their partner. In the language of our allegory: the depres­
sive attempts to avoid their anxiety by giving up the " self-rota­
tion" or by not allowing it in the other. They are in orbit around
the other or make the other circle in orbit around them. So they
live a moon -like, echo-like, reflective life or instead force the oth­
er into such a life. At the most, they are conscious of the fear of
loss, but the fear of individuation which is the real problem re­
mains mainly unconscious. The depressive's fear that independ­
ence of one or the other partner could lead to a developing-away­
from-one-another and, therefore, to a possible loss contains the

Fea r of sel f- bec o m i n g : 63

•
 quintessential understanding that every process of individual dif­
ferentiation and of independence isolates us just that little bit more.
The more we become ourselves, the more we differentiate our­
selves from others, the less we share with them. Individuation al­
ways means falling out of the security of the being-like-the-oth­
ers and is therefore associated with anxiety; the gregarious in­
stinct attempts to alleviate this anxiety the way immersion into a
mass alleviates the fear of individuation. The depressive person
is particularly susceptible to this anxiety. In his or her case a be­
ing-different-from-the-others, having a different way of think­
ing or feeling can cons tell ate the fear of loss because it is experi­
enced as a distancing and an alienation. This is why depressives
seek to relinquish everything that differentiates them from the
other.
Let us clarify this somewhat. The less we have learned to de­
velop our self-being, our autonomy, the more we need others.
Thus the fear of loss is revealed as the reverse side of ego weak­
ness. This is why any attempt to secure oneself against fear of loss
by giving up more and more of oneself can only fail or even back­
fire altogether. Those who do not develop a strong ego need a
stronger ego from outside as a support on which they are in­
creasingly dependent the more they remain weak themselves.
However, whoever becomes so dependent must suffer permanent
anxiety about losing this support - after all, they have invested
everything in the other, delegated so much to them that they be­
lieve themselves unable to exist without them because their exist­
ence rests completely in the other. This is why depressive per­
sons seek the dependency which promises to give them security;
with increasing dependency, however, the fear of loss also in­
creases; this is why they want to adhere so closely to the other
and react with panic even at the shortest separation. This results
in the vicious circle typical of this situation which can only be
breached by the venturing towards a self-becoming, the au­
tonomous subject-being.
If, in order to circumvent his fear of commitment, the schizoid
person protects him or herself from intimate closeness by, among
other things, holding onto the opinion that people are dangerous
and not to be trusted, the depressive tends toward the opposite:

64 : The d e p res s i ve per s o n a l i t i e s

•
he or she idealizes other people, particularly those to whom they
feel close, makes light of them, sees only good in them, excuses
their weaknesses or overlooks their darker side. They do not want
to perceive anything frightening or alarming in them because that
would endanger the relationship in which they want to trust. Thus
they develop too little imagination for the evil in mankind - in
others and in themselves; as in order to trust so completely and
love so unconditionally they must suppress doubt and criticism,
must make sure these do not become conscious; they steer clear
of conflicts, avoid arguments "for the sake of peace" because these
threaten to alienate them from the partner. They idealize the part­
ner and generally see people as too good which, in addition to
the closely related danger of being exploited, also results in the
long-lasting naIvete and childlikeness often found in such per­
sons. Thus they employ the ostrich policy and hide their heads
from life's abysmal depths in the sand by clinging to the belief
that mankind is good.
Now, in return for the harmony they have striven for and the
unclouded closeness, the depressive has to respond by being
" good" and is industrious in exhibiting all altruistic virtues; hu­
mility, readiness to relinquish, peaceableness, selflessness, sym­
pathy and compassion to name only the most important. These
virtues can exhibit all degrees of altruism: a supervalent humil­
ity which demands nothing for itself; overadaptation and sub­
mission reaching self abandonment which in extreme cases leads
to masochistically dependent behavioural patterns. All this can
be reduced to a common denominator: To ban the fear of loss,
the fear of loneliness, one renounces one's own wishes, forgoes
self-being and withdraws from the feared process of individual
differentiation.
In so doing, dangerous self-delusions can arise. By making an
ideology of these behavioural patterns, the depressive can hide
from him or herself not only the motivation of this behaviour,
that is, fear of loss, but can also come to feel morally superior to
those who are less humble or less peaceable. They therefore make
a virtue of necessity and think they are offering and sacrificing
something which they have neither developed yet nor possess:
their ego.

III
•
Fea r of s e l f- bec o m i n g : 65
•
 This avoidance of the process of individual differentiation is
paid for dearly by the fact that a person like this does not dare
to live all the things within him or herself such as wishes, im­
pulses, emotions and urges. They do not permit themselves to
do so, either due to fear or to their ideology - they cannot sud­
denly begin to do what they have condemned in others. This is
why they are more and more dependent on having their wishes,
which of course they still retain, fulfilled by others. Those who
do not dare to hope that they will receive this fulfilment - per­
haps even as a reward for their humility - hope that it will come,
if not here below then at least in heaven, as Christian ideology
promIses.
From this emerges the passive mental set of depressives which
does not, however, protect them from disappointments and the
depression resulting from them when life does not fulfil their ex­
pectations. If, on the other hand, they were to renounce this ex­
pectation of reward, then depression would break out in real
earnest. During their lives, depressives often find themselves in
the situation of Tantalus: they see the fruits and the water before
them but cannot reach them because they have not learned to grasp
something for themselves or have not allowed it to happen for
themselves. They cannot demand, cannot claim something for
themselves; they cannot be healthily aggressive. This all has the
effect of their developing weak self-esteem which in its turn
weakens their courage to demand and to take hold. Here is an
example of depressive behaviour:

A young married woman said: "My h usband often goes out with a
young g irl; I know hertoo, she is very attractive and my h usband is eas ­
ily seduced. I then sit at home and cry my eyes out but don 't want h im
to notice. Ifl were to reproach h im he would think I was narrow-mind­
ed andjealous and I 'm afraid that would get on his nerves and would
drive h im a way completely. He says men are just made that way and
that if I really loved h im I would allow h im th is. JJ

She is obviously unsure what exactly she "must allow" her hus­
band in order not to disappoint his idea of a modern relationship
although she does not share it. She is unsure of what she should

66 : The d e p res s i ve pers o n a l i t ies

•
accept or how she can defend herself against something that is
foreign to her nature; as she also has low self-esteem she over­
estimates every rival. Instead of stating her opinion and acknow-
1edging her threshold of tolerance, instead of perhaps making her
husband, who appears to take her very much for granted, j ealous
in his turn, she is much too fearful of losing him. She overtaxes
herself in order not to appear narrow-minded and thinks she must
always adapt herself to his wishes, an attitude which he repeat­
edly takes advantage of. When she felt there was a danger of his
slipping away from her completely, she thought she could hold
him by being more willing to show understanding. She was at a
total loss when she realized that he merely despised her for this.
Because she did not take herself seriously, he did not either. To­
day one often finds similar situations; a general uncertainty re­
garding freedom and attachment, regarding fidelity and living out
one's sexuality, often supported by cultural propaganda. which
asks too much of many people, particularly of depressives, and
makes them do things that they actually do not want to do for
fear of not being "modern" and of not understanding the "trend
of the times" .
In her daily life this young woman was the victim of many al­
truistic demands that she made on herself. At Christmas every
year she made a list of almost one hundred people to whom she
"must" write or give a present to so that weeks beforehand she
came under time pressure and was reduced to depression by
worrying about how she was going to manage it all in addition
to her usual everyday tasks. She never realized that she could
change this if she wanted to and even felt guilty when she felt dis­
inclined to take on these burdens.
Here is an example of a tendency toward being an "unlucky
person", which we often find among the depressives :

"/ can try a s hard a s / wan t b u t everyth ing always goes wrong. Yester­
day / wen t to the hairdressers, they completely ruined my hairdo, cut
it all wrong. Then the repairman didn 't come like he said he would ­
th is kind of thing always happens to me. To cheer myself up / went to
buy a blouse but at h ome realized / didn 't like it at all, / actually want­
ed a completely differen t one. JJ

..

Fea r of s e l f- bec o m i n g : 67
..
 Here one can easily see that such persons do not express their
wishes clearly enough or that they only have unclear, vague wish­
es. This results in their always being disappointed, blaming it on
external circumstances or just their bad luck. She had not told the
hairdresser clearly what she wanted, nor, when buying the blouse
did she have a clear idea of what she really wanted - she just want­
ed to do herself a "favour" to make up for the disappointments.
She was feeling sorry for herself and had the feeling that she was
always unlucky and that life discriminated against her; she did
not understand that the vagueness of her wishes and her inabil­
ity to demand something were the actual problem. The experi­
ence with the repairman, common enough today, she interpret­
ed tendentiously so that she could feel sorry for herself and see
herself as an unlucky person, thereby veiling the possibility of
recognizing her own part in the events. With her "this kind of
thing always happens to me " she thrust the cause away from her­
self and onto the "big bad world" and could therefore lay the
blame of her inhibition and anxiety at the door of fate that damned
her to being an unlucky person. She drew a certain satisfaction
from this self-pity - it meant she did not have to change herself.
The conflicts depressives are subject to are often expressed in
disturbances of the upper digestive tract which of course is sym­
bolically representative of everything to do with taking for one­
self, incorporating into oneself, grasping and demanding. In con­
flict situations they easily exhibit psychosomatic symptoms in
the throat, the tonsils, the oesophagus and the stomach. Adipos­
ity and anorexia can also be connected psychodynamically with
such conflicts. The colloquial " drowning one's sorrows " de­
scribes pithily the experience that after disappointments or loss­
es we like to compensate by eating or drinking. From this, it is
often a short step to addictions of all kinds that should be un­
derstood as substitute gratification or as a fleeing from the world.
In the case of depressives, the difficulty of appropriating some­
thing for oneself, of taking possession of something, can also be
expressed in - as they call it themselves - a "feeble memory". They
have trouble remembering things, forget quickly and think this
is an organic symptom. When one looks more closely, however,
it is apparent that they do not apperceive impressions complete-

68 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n a l i t ies

•
ly, do not really absorb them with interest and attention because
they are afraid of succumbing to too strong a stimulus. This would
draw them into the conflict of wanting something intensely and
not being able to take it; so they construct what amounts to a fil­
ter in front of many stimuli and become resigned early on to dis­
appointment. This can lead to learning difficulties or to general
fatigue and lethargy which have the same function as a protect­
ive filter and now retroactively magnify the depression because
one continually fails and is disappointed in oneself. Such appar­
ent weak memory exhibited by depressives is also often a sign of
their resignation, of their deep conviction that it will never be
possible for them to take possession of anything. They would
prefer to renounce everything in advance - then they could only
be pleasantly surprised. They carry on a policy of sour grapes in
that they present to themselves that which they would like, but
believe they may or cannot possess, is not worth having anyway,
they devalue it. Thus they save themselves the possible disap­
pointment of wanting to have something and not receiving it, but
at the same time the world becomes increasingly more colour­
less, grey and arid as having no expectations or desires of life makes
it become more and more empty and boring. Therefore, they are
sitting, as it were, at the rich banquet of life and dare not reach
out to serve themselves. Instead they must watch how others take
what they want and enj oy it, feeling very much at their ease too
while doing so.
Again and again the depressive reaches the threshold of his or
her ability to adjust and to relinquish. However, if they recog­
nize that they cannot avoid subj ect-being, and if they do not want
to perish from the constant overtaxing by their "virtues " or to be
"eaten alive by j ealousy" of those who take what they want from
life and enj oy it without guilt and anxiety, then here can lie the
path to recovery.

11

Fea r of s e l f- bec o m i n g : 69
11
 The d epressive person and love

ove, wanting to love and wanting to be loved, is the most

Limportant thing in the life of depressive persons. Here they
can develop the best in themselves, herein also lie the greatest en­
dangerments for them. After reading the previous chapter, it is
understandable that it is particularly in the area of partner rela­
tionships that crises can arise. Tension, arguments and conflicts
in this area are torture to them, even unbearable, and usually im­
pose an unnecessary burden as they activate the depressive per­
son's fear of loss . It is incomprehensible to such people that their
efforts with regard to their partners often lead to crises because
the partner attempts to free him or herself from such clinging con­
striction. The depressive reacts with panic, with deep depression
and in his or her anxiety sometimes uses blackmailing tactics; go­
ing as far as threatened or attempted suicide. They cannot imag­
ine that the partner does not have the same need of closeness as
they themselves, who cannot get enough. The need of the part­
ner for distance is experienced, therefore, as a lack of affection or
as a sign that they are no longer loved.
The ability to make an empathetic identification, that is, with
loving fondness to experience the being of the other in a tran­
scendental sharing is particularly characteristic of depressives and
one of their most beautiful traits. Genuinely lived, this is an es­
sential element of all loving, yes, of all humaneness. Their will­
ingness to experience identification with the partner can expand
to a psychic empathy in which the separating border between I
and Thou is indeed suspended. The primal desire of all lovers and
the yearning of the mystic are the dissolution of all barriers in or­
der to become transcendentally one with the divine or with cre­
ation. They hope, perhaps subconsciously, to rediscover on a high­
er plane the limitless relationship to the mother experienced in
early childhood. We will see below what decisive importance our
early experiencing of our mother has for the development of our
ability to love. Healthy people with depressive impact possess
great abilities for loving, commitment and willingness to sacri­
fice and the ability to stand by their partner in difficult times;

70 : T h e d e p res s i ve per s o n
•
they can offer security, emotional closeness and warmth and un­
conditional love.
In the more disturbed depressives, the fear of loss predom­
inates in love relationships; this causes the typical, difficult de­
pressive partner relationship. The two most common forms look
like this: One attempts to live only through the partner, in com­
plete identification with him or her. This indeed makes the great­
est closeness possible. One has become one with the other, has
stopped being a separate individual being, stopped having a life
of one's own. One thinks and feels like the other, guesses their
wishes; one knows what the other dislikes and what bothers them
and makes sure to keep such things away from them; one takes
on the same views and shares their opinions - in short, one lives
as though a different way of thinking, a different opinion, a dif­
ferent taste, just generally a being-different-from-the-other and
being-oneself were dangerous and would inevitably invoke the
fear of loss. Therefore, one enters completely into the partner and
lives in the consciousness of self-sacrificing love and selflessness.
The truth or falsehood of such love is differentiated by whether
one attempts to avoid the " self-rotation" and the corresponding
fear of loss or whether, in spite of recognizing the endangerment
inherent in all loving, one can free oneself and the other to allow
for individual development and still venture to love them.
Here, "wither thou goest, I will go " becomes more or less ab­
solute. For the partner, a relationship like this is in many ways
very comfortable; however, those who expect more from a part­
nership than finding merely an echo of themselves in the partner
or a spirit always at one's beck and call will be disappointed in it.
Similar to this is when one gives oneself up to such an extent from
fear of loss that one more or less becomes a child again. One dele­
gates everything that one actually could and should do oneself
to the partner, thus becoming ever more dependent and helpless
without the partner. This is based on the idea that the partner
would think one didn't need them if one was more independent
oneself - the depressive imagines being able to hold the other more
securely by exploiting their own neediness. Subconsciously, in this
case, one is often obviously repeating a father-child or mother­
child relationship in the partner relationship - and it is not only

•
•
. . . a n d l ove : 71
•
 a few marriages that take on this form. Similar to this is the way
that some people, only recently widowed, marry again immedi­
ately even though they loved their late partner in their own way.
They have too little life of their own and are able to adjust and
adapt to any new partner - the main thing being that they are not
on their own.
What is being aimed for in all these situations is similar to a
symbiosis, a dissolving of the separating borders between I and
Thou. One strives for a merging in which I and Thou are no longer
different and where, as a depressive once said, "You don't know
where you stop and the other starts ". Preferably, the depressive
would like to melt into the other completely or lovingly " eat them
up " so that he or she would be completely absorbed or would
completely assimilate the other. In both cases, the problem lies
in the fact that one is avoiding the process of individual differ­
entiation or not permitting it in the other.
Often, in partner relationships, one finds an attitude of "If I
love you, what business is it of yours ". This is an admirable at­
tempt to avoid fear of loss; the partner can behave however they
like - because one loves the feeling for him or her more than the
person themselves and is therefore only dependent on oneself and
one's willingness to love; thus one can achieve eternity and im­
mutability.
More difficult is the other form of depressive partner rela­
tionships, the blackmailing love. This likes to clothe itself in the
guise of overprotectiveness behind which is concealed a dom­
ineering nature stemming from the fear of loss. If one cannot
achieve what one wants by this means, one proceeds to stronger
measures, to threats of suicide and particularly to engendering
feelings of guilt in the partner. If all this proves to be inadequate,
they fall into profound depression and desperation. Formulations
such as "If you don 't love me any more then I don 't want to live
any longer" burden the partner with the responsibility that the
life of the other is dependent on their behaviour. If they are too
soft and tend towards feelings of guilt then they cannot assess the
situation properly, and tragedies can be played out here from
which there is no escape if the mutual entanglement is too deep.
This results in those partnerships that are only maintained due

72 : T h e dep res s i ve per s o n

•
to fear, pity and feelings of guilt and in which hate and death wish­
es simmer under the surface. Sickness can also be used as a weapon
of blackmail and lead to similar tragedies.
We can see again that the fear and conflict of depressives also
have a general validity: The deeper we love, the more we have to
lose and among the endangerments of human life we are all look­
ing for a modicum of security which we deeply hope to find in
love. We have also seen that avoidance of individuation offers no
guarantee against fear of loss. On the contrary; because we are
endeavouring to shirk a task imposed on us, we constellate just
that which we are attempting to evade. Being a partner necessi­
tates a creative distance which enables both partners to be them­
selves, to develop into themselves. True partnership is only pos­
sible between two independent individuals, not in a relationship
of dependency of one on the other when one of the partners be­
comes the obj ect. Those who do not venture to be independent
partners are the ones threatened by the danger of loss; it is through
dependency and insufficient self-esteem that he or she is in dan­
ger of losing the respect of the other and in doing so causes oth­
ers to see them as someone who is not to be taken quite serious­
ly. On the other hand, whoever seeks to make the partner an ir­
responsible child must reckon with the fact that the partner will
one day attempt to free him or herself and will want to be taken
seriously or will find that the threshold of tolerance will be over­
stepped and love will turn to hate. Unless, of course, one is liv­
ing a neurosis together - but this will be a stagnating relation­
ship, one without further development, usually the almost lit­
eral repetition of a childhood relationship.
For depressives, sexuality is less important than love, affec­
tion and tenderness. If they receive these they can find j oy in phys­
ical giving and in this case also are empathetic and hold the atti­
tude that love knows no bounds with regard to what is permit­
ted or not. In cases of great dependency one can find all forms of
masochism up to slavishness, behind which there is often the idea
that this is the only possibility of holding the partner - by sur­
rendering completely to their will.
How much freedom or attachment the individual needs, can
bear, or finds intolerable can never be determined by a general

•
•
. . . a n d l ove : 73
•
 ruling; here, each must find the solution appropriate to their cir­
cumstances. People, their predispositions, their biographies and
their social situations differ too much to make it possible that
one could find a valid form for all partnerships, judging diver­
gent forms as wrong or bad. We must muster enough human
understanding for each other that we can respect forms of love
that are alien to us; otherwise it becomes too easy to judge those
who have already experienced deprivation in their childhood, have
difficulty finding a mature love and are now even being punished
for this.

The d epressive person and aggression

fter all we have said, you will understand that dealing with
A aggression and emotions is a large problem for depres­
sives. How can they be aggressive, carry their points and assert
themselves if they are full of the fear of loss, experiencing them­
selves as dependent and thus relying on love ? The dependent can
not attack the one they are dependent on, whom they need. That
would mean sawing at the branch they are sitting on. On the oth­
er hand, aggression and emotions are inescapable, as is the world
and the people in it, and naturally, as is oneself. What is one to
do with one's aggressions when they loom so menacingly ?
One possibility is to evade them. This can perhaps be achieved
by developing an ideology of peaceableness. Thus one no longer
perceives the opportunities for aggression, nor the aggression it­
self, not inside oneself and not in the world around one. When
the situation demands that one assert oneself, defend oneself, it
is defused by reinterpreting the state of affairs and presenting it
as harmless: the other didn't mean it that way; it's not worth get­
ting aggressive about such a bagatelle; one will only lose face over
it. The more one withdraws into oneself within the framework
of such an ideology and allows oneself to be slighted without de­
fending oneself, the more one has to compensate for this attitude
by a feeling of moral superiority, without realizing that this is
also a - sublime - form of aggression.

74 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n
•
 This attitude can be magnified into the role of the martyr which
can lead to mental, moral or sexual masochism. In this case, a
bizarre reciprocation can emerge where what is not lived, not
dared, is experienced in the identification with the other to whom
one cedes it, delegates it. Whoever thus allows themselves to be­
come the object of a demanding, grasping and aggressive partner,
experiences in the identification with them not only these aspects
which are suppressed in them but is strongly subject to that feel­
ing of moral superiority: as the sufferer, he or she is the better
person and believes they remain free of guilt if they ensure the
other becomes the guilty party. This makes clear the question­
ability of living one-sided "virtues": while one believes one is con­
sciously the sufferer, one unconsciously turns the partner into
the sufferer; the sado-masochistic relationship is reversed; the
"saint" becomes the tormenter, the " sinner" is tormented. "Not
the Murderer (but the Victim) is Guilty," is the name of a work
by Franz Werfel. Allowing the other to become aggressive, "bad"
and therefore guilty while exhibiting patient martyrdom one­
self awakens in the partner an increasing sense of guilt; if one
even goes so far as to become ill due to the partner's behaviour,
then he or she will never escape this feeling of guilt while the
apparent victim remains the virtuous sufferer. Macabre things
can take place in cases like this which allow one to gain an inkling
of the intensity of the emotions behind severe depression with­
out their ever being recognized as aggression by the person con­
cerned - he or she would be deeply shocked if offered this in­
terpretatIon.
We have already mentioned that subconscious aggression is at
work behind the overprotective love of depressive persons; with
such overprotectiveness they can suffocate the partner downright,
can "reduce them to a j elly".
The aggressions in probably the most common form of de­
pressive aggression also remain subconscious: in querulousness,
complaining and lamenting. People like this are not aware that
these can have a draining effect on the partner. They complain
that everything is just too much, people are so wicked, so incon­
siderate; they wear a face of wordless accusation and awaken feel­
ings of guilt in the other in myriad ways so that the partner sees

•
•
' " a n d a gg res s i o n : 75
•
 him or herself forced to be ever more considerate and sympa­
thetic in their dealings with the depressive. Or, it can all become
too much for the partner, they see through the situation and lib­
erate themselves from the sense of guilt with which the depres­
sive has burdened them.
If the aggression does not find one of these indicated paths for
expression, it can be manifested first of all in self-pity and ultim­
ately turn itself against one's own person as is seen most in­
tensely in the melancholic. From the conflict, which for him or
her has become insoluble, between aggression, feelings of guilt
and the fear of losing love he or she must now turn all the accus­
ations, reproaches and hate that were formally directed at an­
other towards themselves - up to self-hatred and to conscious or
unconscious self-destruction. Truly tragic is the self-destruction
arising from formerly justified feelings of envy and hatred in child­
hood that one was never allowed to express because this would
have worsened one's situation and made one feel wicked. Because
one found no opportunity, no vent to release one's emotions and
because they were experienced with feelings of guilt, one had to
turn them against oneself which also serves as self-punishment.
I
The greatest tragedies take place in childhood; in this case, that
the child has to internalize the rej ection of itself as self-hatred and
due to its fear of loss and insecurity must experience its aggres­
sion as representing too great a burden on its already endangered
situation. Thus, the later depressive has not learned at an early
age to deal with his or her aggression. This regularly results in
the fact that they realize, too late or not at all, where and when
they ought to have been, or could have been, aggressive. They
have the wrong idea of the measure of aggression necessary to
achieve something, to carry a point or to assert themselves. They
give in to resignation in the face of the idea that enormous
amounts of aggression, which they do not have at their disposal,
would be called for. Ultimately, they have a greatly exaggerated
idea of what the possible consequences of expressed aggression
might be. From their anxiety and willingness to shoulder guilt
they imagine these consequences to be too great - they are al­
ways fearful of the boomerang effect, which strikes one with dou­
ble the force with which it was originally thrown. Recognizing

76 : The d e p res s i ve pers o n

•
when they should be aggressive, recognizing the fact that some­
times only a steady gaze, a certain posture would be sufficient to
command respect, thus gaining insight into their overestimation
of the possible results of expressed aggression, are intersections
where the depressive can practise creating new experiences with
their aggressions.
We could say that the suppressed aggressions of the depres­
sive exhibit an upward trend leading from overprotectiveness,
making an ideology of modesty, peaceableness and humility,
through to lamenting, complaining and the martyr attitude, and
finally to the turning against oneself with self-reproaches, self­
accusations and self-punishments which can lead to self-de­
struction. Somatization, already mentioned, belongs to the turn­
ing of aggression against oneself; some severe or incurable illnesses
can develop psychosomatically on such a soil, so to speak, as a
last subconscious self-punishment and at the same time turn re­
venge into self-destruction.
Emotions and aggression that cannot or may not be expressed
and, therefore, find no outlet do not only become extremely tor­
menting; they also lead to a general lack of drive leading to pas­
sivity and indolence which, at the same time as being the result
of the inhibited aggression, lead secondarily to its renewed inhib­
ition. Hatred, anger and envy are also unavoidable in the life of
a child but do not become dangerous until they are internally
suppressed and become the background for depressions. Help­
less anger, frustrated aggression, feelings of hatred and envy that
we have to suppress make us even later in life depressive and
" downcast" - how much more so when we are children and may
not admit to them due to our dependency and helplessness ? Not
until the child is allowed to express its emotions and aggressivi­
ty can it learn to cope with them, to apply them appropriately to
the situation or to forego them. When a child is conspicuously
quiet and good, when it is bored and takes no interest in life, when
it shows no initiative and has to be encouraged to be active, when
it has a tendency to an unchildlike lack of energy, when it is un­
able to occupy itself alone and reacts supervalently to being left
alone, these are all signs of incipient depressive moods that one
should pay attention to.

It

. . . a n d a gg res s i o n : 77
It
 The mature form of coping with aggression can only be ac­
quired by having experiences with one's aggressivity. Healthy and
mastered aggressivity is an important part of our self-esteem, the
feeling for the dignity of our personality and for a healthy pride.
The low self-esteem of depressive persons has its root in their
not-ventured, not-mastered aggressivity. Goethe's words from
"Elective Affinities", "Against the great advantages of another
there is no succour but love" is a sublimation of envy, but - a child
can not yet sublimate.
Now we should again ask ourselves how the development of
depressive personalities can occur, how the fear of loss and the
fear of self-becoming can become so supervalent in a person.

The biographical b ack gro u nd

he constitutional disposition can be an emotionally warm

T and sensitive one with a willingness and an ability to love
as well as with a great gift for empathy. These traits are often com­
bined with a certain clinging ponderousness and devotion which
makes it difficult for the depressive to detach themselves from
anything that means a lot to them and in which they have invested
a great deal. An emotional structure, therefore, that facilitates a
tendency to fidelity, constancy and to loving empathy is often to
be found in those persons with a slightly melancholy impact. Here
we must leave to speculation how far these traits are again the re­
sult of the recognized impossibility or, at least, the constant en­
dangering of being able to express one's disposition as one would
like. At the same time, in persons like this - also due to their dis­
position - the aggressive ability to assert oneself tends to recede
into the background; they have too little assertiveness, are peace­
able by nature, good-natured and not very pugnacious. Anoth­
er constitutional component could lie in a sensitive vital weak­
ness, in a permeability or skinlessness, a lack of a "tough skin"
which causes them to be more reliant on protection and support
which can easily in its turn subconsciously demand fathering or
mothering. One can probably also count an inborn tendency to

78 : T h e dep res s i ve p e r s o n
•
a phlegmatic character and love of convenience among the con­
stitutionally favouring factors - although the question here of
what is disposition or what is reactive response is very difficult
to answer.
Again, the constitutional and the biographical conditions will
overlap one another. We can best understand the biographical con­
texts that promote depressive personality development when we
once again place ourselves in the situation of the small child, now
in its second stage of development. In contrast to the earliest phase
in which the child gradually began to perceive its environment
consciously, it has now recognized the mother as the source of
the satisfaction of all its needs, for which her regular and reliable
reappearance is decisively important. The child needs the mother
and is full of anxiety when she goes away. It is quite dependent
on her and oriented to her, she is its most important point of
reference. The child absorbs her image and her being with all its
senses. Through the long period of its complete dependency on
the mother, her image is imprinted deeply on its soul. Thus the
mother is "internal-ized" and becomes an extremely integral part
of the child's soul: The way it experiences the mother in her at­
titude towards herself will form the foundation in its innermost
being of how it will relate later to itself. This inner portrayal, this
"introjected" or "incorporated", as psychoanalysis calls it, mother
figure, the individual mother-experience is reflected later in our
attitude towards ourselves. Those who were lucky enough to have
a loving mother to introject find themselves utterly lovable and
those who had the bad luck of having to incorporate a hard and
rejecting mother within themselves will find themselves utterly
unlovable and will need a long time and many new experiences
in order to be able to believe that they are worthy of love. Thus
the capital inherent in a successful mother-experience cannot be
appreciated highly enough.
In a good mother relationship there is a proportion between
give and take which is experienced by mother and child as en­
j oyable. Echo-like, the child reflects what it is given; it answers
the mother's smile with a smile and, later, its smile will call forth
one from the mother. There is an intimate affinity, a speculative
understanding between the two which is one of the happiest things

..
..

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 79
..
 life has to offer and we can understand that here the first awak­
enings of thankfulness, hope and loving are made. The child is
still in the short Eden-like period of its life where nothing is de­
manded of it, in which its needs are anticipated and satisfied and
in which it can, and should, experience its being with j oy and
comfort. What is new in this second phase of early child devel­
opment is the now recognized dependency on another human be­
ing and at the same time the emerging need for trusting closeness
to this human being who normally is the mother.
It is of great importance that the mother offers this opportun­
ity to the child in order for it to become capable of "taking some­
one into its heart". After all, the mother figure and her being make
up the first impression of people, of being altogether human which
the child will internalize. Whether or not it will experience for
the first time love or rej ection, will feel loved or unloved, depends
on how the mother looks at it, touches it, treats it and takes care
of it. The sensitivity and impressionability of the child already
reacts to the most subtle impressions. The road is being paved
here for its later relationship towards itself which supplies the
deep foundation for its self-esteem - " as you call into the woods,
so comes back the echo".
Now let us ask ourselves wherein the possibilities for disor­
ders lie during this phase that cause the impulse to " self-rotation"
to be experienced with anxiety and guilt instead of with j oy. There
are two characteristic faulty attitudes of the mother which we
will call spoiling and rej ection.
Let us deal with spoiling first. Here we mainly find the dis­
tinctly small-child mother, the "mother hen" who would prefer
that the child remain a baby, helpless and dependent, never ceas­
ing to need her. Mothers, that is, who often themselves belong to
the depressive structure group and who spoil the child from sub­
conscious fear of loss and fear of life or from fear of losing love.
They overwhelm it with tenderness and will not hear of it learn­
ing a healthy and necessary doing-without.
Sometimes destiny takes a hand; such as with women who are
disappointed in their marriages or who have lost their partner and
for whom the child now represents their whole life-interest. They
need the child too much, need its love and will undertake every-

80 : The d e p res s i ve pers o n

•
thing that will put it under grateful obligation. The older the child
becomes, the more of a problem the mother becomes. They see
with alarm how the child is developing, how it is growing and
gaining independence. For them, this means: it is developing away
from me, soon it will no longer need me and will turn to other
people. Probably, this clinging - and wanting to keep the child
small - comes from a deep mothering instinct; one must also not
underrate the great sacrifices over a long period of time that a
mother must make for her child. After all, who willingly lets go
of what they have spent a long time lovingly caring for ?
They spoil the child from the very beginning: when still breast­
feeding they pick it up every time it cries - crying which is often
only a vital self-confirmation - thereby stifling its vital impul­
ses; respond to every reaction of displeasure from the child with
smothering tenderness so that it hardly has an opportunity to ex­
press affective emotions or discover ways to cope with its dis­
comfort on its own. They are constantly at the beck and call of
the child while drawing its attention and feelings towards them
and living with it, as boxers say, in a constant clinch, in a mutu­
ally intermeshed closeness in which neither has any freedom of
movement. Urged by the same motives, such mothers continue
to relieve the child of everything, to pre-empt everything, to pre­
pare everything for it and to position themselves between the child
and the rest of the world, sheltering it in every conceivable way.
They are unable to accept the child's healthy and unavoidable af­
fects and react with hurt feelings and tears which awaken feelings
of guilt in the child, even for perfectly normal, age-appropriate
behaviour.
All this not only binds the child increasingly closer to the
mother, but also results in it having little opportunity for acting
on its own impulses and thus from an early age is unacquainted
with the possibility of doing anything without the mother or with­
out the mother's consent. This can reach such a pass that it final­
ly has no more wishes of its own; it has resigned and drifted into
a passive indolence but at the same time has the expectation that
its wishes must be anticipated and satisfied as it has forgotten how
to wish for something itself, has given up the possibility. This is
how lazy and passive expectant attitudes develop - the idea of life

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c kg ro u n d : 81
•
•
 as a Cockaigne - which conceal the underlying depression. In his
novel " Oblomov", Goncharov drew a brilliant picture of such a
development.
The extensive loss of desires, wanting and impulses also caus­
es a general ineptness in dealing with the world as such, so a sec­
ondary result is that one remains even more dependent on others.
Often, mothers like this tell their child that the world outside is
evil and dangerous so that in its further development it believes
that warmth, security, understanding and safety are only to be
found at home with mother. This weakens its impulses of turning
towards the world even further, after all, at home it has everything
it could possibly want. If possible, such mothers do not allow oth­
ers to approach their children and shelter them jealously; girlfriends
and boyfriends are denigrated or the mother reacts aggrievedly
and sadly to friendships as if they were infidelities against her, as
she sees in everyone a potential rival who might steal her child
from her. The child is thus kept wrapped in cotton-wool, often
until far beyond puberty; its own impulses are smothered in the
enveloping folds of protective motherly love. Nothing rough, hard
or cold on which it could measure itself is permitted to approach
the child. It remains with the expectation that the world outside
will continue to spoil it and is doomed to failure when confront­
ed with reality. This is when it experiences its own incompetence
and weakness and has to seek refuge in the old security. Due to its
ego weakness, coping with life appears to be such an enormous
task that it takes fright and gives up in resignation.
Mothers like this are thus unable to let go of their child at the
right time and appropriate age and to liberate it for its own de­
velopment. They bind it to them with their love needs which does
not even allow the child to freely express its own affection but
demands it instead: "Be nice to me ", "Give me a kiss ". They re­
lieve the child· of everything: "Leave that, I'll do itforyou ", "That's
too heavy for you ", " You are too small to do that " and interrupt
its own impulses "Why don 't you play with this? ", "Stop doing
that " without any idea of the harm they are causing. Namely, in
this way, they are killing all healthy self-development and ultim­
ately also the so important preparatory imaginings about life
in the first preliminary stirrings towards coping with the world.

82 : The d e p re s s i ve per s o n
•
If, under such conditions, the child cannot learn its "self-rota­
tion", it will stay fixated on the mother, stay a reactive echo and
will neither learn to know the world nor its own possibilities and
limitations. It remains passive and willing to conform and with
expectations that life will continue to be a mothering entity will­
ing to spoil it. Naturally, disappointments are inescapable and for
the most part these lead to the outbreak of the so far latent, in­
sidious depression.
The situation of the mother towards the child can be made
more severe by various twists of fate such as divorce or widow­
hood, by the birth coming at a difficult time in the marriage, or
by too many births following one after the other. Single children
are understandably generally more endangered in this regard
than are children with siblings, where the possessive love of the
mother does not have just a single child as an outlet. A patient, a
single child, once made the drastic statement,
"When my mother pours the corn ucopia of her love over me, I come
away with bruises ".
Having to let go of one's children is a necessity that makes the
whole being-a-mother in this sense a thankless task, especially
the more one expects thanks, or even demands them. If one does
not have, or strive to acquire, the maturity to see the healthy self­
development of one's children as the true reward of one's love,
trouble, sacrifice and renunciation, one will cause them and one­
self unnecessary and avoidable suffering.
The inner situation of such children is even more complicat­
ed. It is no wonder that they can also feel hate for a mother who
so disemp owers them and takes possession of them. Should they
ever dare to express even a part of this she will awaken a sense of
guilt in them by cataloguing all the things she has done and sac­
rificed for the child. This is of course true, only the child did not
ask for these things and now must be thankful for something that
it not only did not want, but which has even been detrimental to
it. It must probably shamefacedly realize that it must appear ex­
tremely ungrateful and so relinquishes its bid for freedom from
a sense of guilt. Particularly sensitive children can suffer exceed­
ingly under this and incur impairments as will be seen in the ex-

•
•
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 83
•
 amples. They do not venture to undertake the age-appropriate
steps of disengagement from the mother. And this throws light
on the whole danger of ties that are too constricting and a de­
pendency that is too great. The child must renounce its own self­
development, sacrifice it, rather than bear the burden of guilt of
causing the mother so much grief which, as seen from the child's
point of view, is the only possible solution for this situation. There
is almost nothing more oppressive for a child than such a "bring­
ing up " by means of inculcating a sense of guilt; it is one of the
great sins that the later adults have difficulty forgiving their par­
ents for; that is, if they ever get as far as managing to distance
themselves and to recognize the unnecessary suffering that was
imposed upon them by what was allegedly love. Here is a typi­
cal and not uncommon example:
When the child had been naughty in the eyes of its mother - wh ich
usually only meant that it did not obey her immediately or did some ­
th ing s h e didn 't like - she would lie o n the sofa a n d "die }}. That is, she
wo uld not move for a long time or react to the ch ild 's entreaties until
it wept with distress.
Similar threats to arouse feelings of guilt are frequent - "I'm
going away and not coming back ", " You 're driving me into the
grave " and so on.
If the first motive in spoiling the child was the wish to be loved
by it and to awaken grateful obligation, the second motive is more
complex and with usually more tragic results for the child. We
are talking about the situation where a mother did not want the
child or, for whatever reason, rej ects it and harbours hostile
thoughts towards it while at the same time feels she must be a
good mother and is prey to a feeling of guilt because she is un­
able to do this. She then spoils the child from a sense of guilt and
as an attempt at compensation. This is difficult enough for the
mother - this situation is, understandably, very likely the case
with step-children - but even more so for the child. It can sense
the effort being made but also the rejection or hostility behind it,
the lack of real love that the spoiling is not only unable to coun­
terbalance but which also forces the child into the situation of
having to be thankful for something that is given grudgingly. This

84 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n
•
can result in the child feeling guilt at its own existence, experi­
encing itself as an imposition because it senses itself as a burden
to the mother. It feels as if it does not really have the right to live
and must be glad when it is even tolerated.
Now let us observe the aspect of withholding love from the
child which illustrates the other underlying biography of de­
pressive personality development. The women described here,
austere, lacking the ability to offer motherly love and often hard,
were usually deprived of love in their own childhood and there­
fore lack an image of a mother figure in their experience. They
know too little of the needs of their child. Still relatively harm­
less are the "programme mothers" who, from insecurity and lack
of empathy, nurse and bring up their child according to a rigid
schedule without consideration for the individual needs. This is
illustrated in the diary of a mother, writing of her first-born son,
"The boy has been screaming for hours now, but it is not yet his
feeding time. This entry is repeated in the diary over a long pe­
"

riod. In this regard we must not forget to mention that, as is so

often the case, doctors' private opinions which are purported to
be " scientific" can sometimes play a fatal role.
The child is overtaxed if expected to adapt to living conditions
that take its individual needs too little into account. When it is
nursed too irregularly, when it is laid back in its cot immediate­
ly after feeding without a lengthy period of loving attention, when
the mother does not have enough time for it and feeds it hastily
and impatiently, these are some of the most frequent examples of
possible excessive pressures on the child. As it can not yet defend
itself or express its needs, the child gradually resigns itself to the
world as it is and adapts itself to the fact that there is obviously
nothing more to be expected of its surroundings. This is the ba­
sic vital sense of many depressives: a deep-seated hopelessness;
they are as unable to believe in the future as in themselves and
their possibilities; all they have learned to do is to adapt. They
are governed by a feeling of forlornness and are only strong in
enduring and renouncing. Instead of seeing the world with ex­
pectation and hope they always expect the worst, are extreme pes­
simists and have trouble believing that sometimes life could hold
something j oyous, bright and cheerful in store for them. And if

•
•
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 85
·
 something like this does come to pass, then they feel guilty and
ask themselves how they came to deserve it. They can never tru­
ly delight in something and often ruin happy moments with their
disappointment prophylaxis: as they are not confident that they
will be successful in anything they do not bother to attempt it
with the necessary energy because failure would be even more
painful. If one does not expect anything positive to begin with
then one can only be pleasantly surprised. Here is an example of
such an early withholding-of-love experience that can leave a deep
imprint - once again from a mother's diary:

URightfrom the start you were a m iserable puny child. I breastfedyo u

for the first six weeks b ut often h a d to add feeds with the bottle be­
ca use you threw up my m ilk and then I had none left. Even the first ten
days when I was still in the maternity clinic,you didn 't want to take my
breast. It could takefive to ten m in utes toforce you to, by holding your
nose and th ings like that. Your thro wing up certainly had noth ing to
do with cardiospasm us, at least that 's what the doctors said. It was
more a general oversensitivity and nervousness, like the wayyou nev­
er slept the night thro ug h in the first six months. At home I didn 't h a ve
m uch time and had to go back to work after three weeks. When you
still hadn 't gainedyour normal weight after about three tofour months,
I tookyou to be examined again. The doctor couldn 'tfind anything but
I took you to the ch ildren 's clinicjust in case; the doctor there said you
had s uch a 's ensible loo k ' in your eyes. Your bed in the clinic was u n ­
der a window a n d they only gave you o n e blanket, a t h o m e we h a d
kept you warmer. The result: you got pneumonia. I was terribly nerv­
ous at th is time but at least I went infor thefirst couple of days tofeed
you. I began to see everything as very gloomy. Otherwise, when you
were a child,you were my only solid s upport, during those years Papa
was extremely difficult o wing to h is outbursts and unpredictability.
I 'm sure I made m istakes in bringing you up due to this. I often held
too rigidly to a certain system of lots offresh air and going to bed ear­
ly otherwise you would never have had order and reg ularity in your
life. You were always terribly afraid of doctors ' treatments, yo u
screamed the roof down . Once, when you had earache, the doctor we
had called had to leave again without treating you, quite disg usted
and annoyed with the 'badly brought up' ch ild. "

86 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n
•
This report obviously speaks for itself - it contains pretty much
every instance that could be burdensome for a child and cause
negative imprinting. Early experiences of being deprived of love
can have a twofold effect on the child. First, it learns to become
resigned much too early. This causes it to be inhibited in all ar­
eas of taking-something-for-itself, of demanding and grasping.
Whoever is so willing to renounce their needs and is not ade­
quately able to take what they want will have difficulty refrain­
ing from envy when they see how others unabashedly take what
they do not dare to. Because one feels guilty again for feeling envy
and also bad, one attempts to avoid this by making a virtue of ne­
cessity: one raises one's inhibitedness to a value, to an ideology
of diffidence and modesty as described above. Now one at least
has the consolation of a moral superiority.
The other result arising from early experiences of being de­
prived of love is of imbuing in the child the feeling of not being
lovable. This sets the stage for a deep sense of inferiority - one
must have experienced having been loved in order to see oneself
as lovable and if one has not experienced it then it is one's own
fault, one is just not lovable. This feeling of inferiority is also con­
nected with the fact that the child has no criteria for comparison
at this age. It cannot, therefore, realize that its parents are not ca­
pable of love; its world is "the" world and the way its parents are
is obviously the way " all parents are".
In the case of severe feelings of inferiority, the feeling can arise
that one does not really have a right to live, that one must first
earn this and is only justified in existing if one lives for others.
''just by being alive I am guilty ", stated a depressive patient with
a background like this. This can lead to a guilty fixation on the
mother or the parents, expressing itself in reparation tendencies
towards them; then one sacrifices one's life on the altar of parental
egoism and even takes this for granted.
Ultimately, the effects of spoiling and rej ection are similar:
Both usually lead to the development of a depressive personal­
ity structure. The difference is that the spoilt child does not ex­
perience anxiety and crises until later, not until life spoils it less
than the mother used to and there are no substitute mothers at
hand - such as a caring marriage, state institutions, social securi-

•
•
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 87
•
 ty etc. Then it becomes apparent that it cannot cope with the harsh­
ness and demands of life and there is an outbreak of depression.
Often an escape is found in some form of addiction.
The child who grew up with deficiency experiences and un­
der emotionally deprived circumstances learns very early, too ear­
ly, to do without. It becomes a quiet, undemanding child, shy and
adaptable, which is very convenient for the parents who do not
recognize the depression behind this behaviour. It is so used to
deferring to others, to having no demands of its own that later it
is also always oriented towards others and strives to fulfil their
demands and expectations. As an adult he or she has too little
self-being to present to the world, is too little his or her own sub­
j ect and therefore becomes the obj ect of others. As it becomes
progressively more impossible to fulfil all the supposed demands
- because depressive personalities ultimately experience every­
thing as a demand which they feel bound to fulfil - they become
prey to continually renewed feelings of guilt and, following on
from these, depression. This is why many depressives avoid con­
tact with several people at the same time - how could they fulfil
all the divergent demands - one could attempt this, if at all, with
just one single person. Some might find the solution lies in want­
ing to give others what they themselves never received; they at­
tempt to sublimate the love-deficiency in helping activities, in de­
voted altruism, in charitable professions - but they want to be
loved or rewarded for this, otherwise they risk overtaxing them­
selves.
The forms this can assume, when one finally experiences every­
thing as a demand, can be illustrated by the following sketches :

"When the sun shines I h a ve the feeling I have to b e glad about it -

this ruins the whole dayfor me. JJ A student was not capable of read­
ing a book all the way th rough, even when he was interested at the be­
ginning; after a couple of pages he was overcome by the feeling that
the book wanted to be read by h im .

Thus he did not want, as a subject, to read the book, rather it be­
came a demand, making him the obj ect, so to speak, and there­
fore made him lose all interest in it. It is easy to imagine how such

88 : T he dep res s ive pers o n

•
manners of experiencing can ultimately lead to complete resig­
nation and apathy, to the rej ection of all demands.
We have seen what extreme forms a depressive being-in-the­
world can take. This is why going on " strike" like this is still a
good sign because there is still something there which rebels
against the constant should and must. If such persons are forced
to continue to perform without being given the time and oppor­
tunity to catch up on what they were never allowed - to be sub­
j ects, wanting and acting from their own impulses and desires -
they will be driven to desperation. They can then only save them­
selves in increasing indifference, lethargy and apathy, they be­
come " failures " or flee into addiction or suicide. This is because
they find themselves in a situation which for them has no solu­
tion: If they attempt to give even more of themselves and to ful­
fil the demands made on them, they will never be able to enj oy
life; if they attempt to evade the demands, they fall prey to severe
feelings of guilt. In this way they are subconsciously re-creating
the situation of their childhood.
Above, I described how the child internalizes the mother fig­
ure and how dependent on this mother-experience its attitude to­
wards itself is. An internalized hostile-rejecting or overdemand­
ing mother is not seldom the deepest cause of suicide as the last
possible resignation. It becomes the child's endopsychic author­
ity through which it rej ects itself up until self-hatred and self-de­
struction. The inescapable mother-hatred triggers such profound,
such intolerable feelings of guilt that the child would rather dir­
ect its hatred towards itself. Such linkages of hate, feelings of guilt,
an introjected rejecting mother and self-hatred are the psycho­
dynamic background of severe melancholics. The leanings toward
suicide arising here are the murderous tendencies shifted toward
oneself and at the same time the self-punishment for the hatred
of the mother.
It will have become obvious that the central problem of de­
pressive personalities is the failure to achieve " self-rotation", the
lack of development of the subj ect-being. Because they only have
such a weak ego to turn towards the world, everything is seen as
a demand; whichever way they turn, everywhere they see moun­
tains of demands in the face of which the can only resign in des-

•
•
The b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 89
•
 peration. From the same ego weakness they have neither strong
impulses, wishes or goals of their own, nor are they able to re­
pudiate the excess demands in a mature way - or even to recog­
nize them at all as such; depressive persons have difficulty say­
ing "no" from the fear of loss and from the feelings of guilt that
this would result in. All that remains to them is depression or the
subconscious strike when their threshold of tolerance has been
reached - which, however, does not liberate them from the feel­
ings of guilt. The hatred and envy, which has accumulated in the
depths of their being and which they have never dared to express,
can poison their entire vital sense or must be expiated in ever­
lasting self-accusations and self-punishments. As long as they
attempt to evade the fear of self-becoming by renouncing their
self-being, the situation will remain unresolved. The only thing
that can help here is venturing forward to become an independ­
ent individual.

E x am p les of what t he d epressive person

ex peri ences

M iss M. lived in an apartment that she shared with a colleague,

they also worked together in the same office. Because Miss
M. had a car and the colleag ue did not it had become a habit to offer
her a lift to work in the morning. The colleag ue, who was less con ­
scientious, used to take her time in the mornings causing Miss M. to
arrive late at workfairly often wh ich, due to her sense ofduty, was very
distressing to her. She also began to take the colleag ue with her on her
weekend trips,feeling alm ost duty bound to do so - after all, the oth ­
er did n ot own a car. Then she began to notice that on these days - re ­
markably - she often had inexplicable headaches and stomach -aches.
In the course of her psychotherapeutic treatment it emerged that on
these occasions she always - as seemed perfectly natural for her to
do so - bore the cost of the petrol alone. It was, after all, her car. The
colleag ue never e ven dreamed of offering to share the costs. The pa­
tient was annoyed about this but was neither able to askfor a contri­
bution towards the petrol nor to adm it to her annoyance; on the con -

90 : T h e d e p res s i ve per s o n
•
trary, she felt cheap even harbouring s uch petty thoughts - they were
not worthy of her. Th us she allowed herself to be o vertaxed and ex­
ploited, let her resentment "eat into " her and only the pains showed
her that someth ing was wrong, that her subconscious was sending
alarm signals and reacting with symptoms which expressed what she
did not venture to live consciously: the annoyance and the not-being ­
able -to-demand expressed themselves in the headaches and stomach ­
aches. To make matters more complicated, she was half-Jewish and
thought the colleag ue would assume it was her Jewishness that made
her so petty about money - she had always thought she m ust regard
being Jewish as something negative. She finally managed, in spite of
her reservations, to suggest to her colleag ue that she contribute to the
cost of petrol and, to her surprise, the colleag ue agreed. Not only did
her weekend symptoms then disappear, but the relationship ofthe two
turned into a friendship. The attitude towards her colleag ue vvas just
one example of many others in her daily life.

The daily life of depressive personalities is permeated with such

behaviour where self-affirmation, self assertiveness, saying "no "
o r subj ect-being i s not dared. A s it has become second nature to
them to acquiesce, to comply and not to defend themselves, they
are not conscious of the fact that their apparently groundless de­
pressions are connected with this behaviour, depressions which
they accept as a fact of life, as something ordained which cannot
be altered. Doctors prescribe anti-depressants as they can discover
no external trigger for the depression. Thus, these people can be­
come dependent on medication which at best only offers tem­
porary relief and otherwise only obscures the problem. I would
like to describe the biographical background of this patient in
more detail:

She was the only child in a very difficult mixed marriage - the moth ­
er was Jewish. From a very early age she was witness to the fierce ar­
guments between her motherandfather. Many times the child thought
there was no helpfor it, this time they would separate. Sometimes the
situation in these scenes became so threatening that she was afraid
they would h urt each other. On a n um ber of occasions the parents ex­
pressed to the child their determination to separate; they would say,

•
•
E xa m p les : 91
•
 "Mummy and Daddy want to divorce;you have to decide who you want
to live with, whomyou love the best. " Th is demand, ofafour-year-old,
put her in an untenable situation. She loved both her parents and de ­
ciding between them would have been completely beyond her ability.
Even if she could have made up her m in d, it would have been only with
great feelings of g uilt towards the "betrayed " parent. Th us she at­
tempted desperately - and this was a permanent condition during her
childhood - to reconcile and mediate between the parents. In secret
she told her mother that the father hadn 't meant it that way, he was
just excitable and she m ustn 't take it so seriously, he had told her th is
himself recently and regretted h is beha viour. To the father she went
just as secretly and told h im how unhappy her mother was at the th reat­
ened separation and that she kne w that the mother loved h im, shejust
wasn 't very good at showing it. Partly due to th is spadework, partlyfor
other reasons, the decision to separate was postponed a n um ber of
times. However, the patient had the feeling of living on a volcano that
could erupt at any moment. She took on a very importantfunction in
her parents ' marriage: She tipped the scales or, as she put it herself
"l was the glue and the oil " between her parents - in other words, she
had the feeling it depen ded on her whether or not the parents stayed
together or divorced.
One can imagine that under conditions such as these she could
never h a ve dared to encumber the so unstable and endangered rela ­
tionship between the parents with her o wn needs and problems - she
imagined e veryth ing would then have fallen apart. Therefore, she
could never be un inhibitedly and age -appropriately ch ildlike, be her­
self She had to in voluntarily and reflexively set aside all her o wn de ­
sires, impulses, worries, negative emotions and anxieties; apparently
they did not even arise in her any more. In their stead she developed
symptoms: at a very early age she began to lose her hair, her teeth be­
came loose and the skin flaked off her whole body. She also had an ­
other and very annoying and for her embarrassing symptom: when
she was with other people she was freq uently subject to very lo ud g ur­
glings in her stomach wh ich she began to understan d as a subcon ­
scious protest against the situation threatening to overwhelm her and
which she felt helpless to defen d herselffrom. In this symptom one
can see the precursor of the stomach pains she was to h a ve later due
to the situation with her colleague .

92 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n
•
She th us developed into a person who (functioned "perfectly under the
demands made on her. She fulfilled them conscien tiously and in an
exemplary manner wh ile at the same time suppressing her o wn needs.
Howe ver, she became distressed and was helpless when she had to as ­
sert herself or in the office had to ask someone else to do someth ing.
She thenfell prey to vague anxieties and preferred to do the tasks her­
self, which of course was taken advantage of by her colleagues.

The background of many "leisure" and "Sunday" neuroses is simi­

lar to this one. The unaccustomed leisure time causes anxiety be­
cause it allows secret, suppressed wishes to emerge which have
been experienced as forbidden and for the fulfilling of which the
everyday round offers too little opportunity; the demands of duty
exonerate one from the anxiety of being oneself. An example of
not being able to say no:

A patien t, a young A merican woman, was living in lodgings with a Ger­

man fam ily during the postwar years wh ile she studied ballet. When
she came h ome from practice and would have liked to slip past un
obtrusively and go to her room, her lan dlady would reg ularly waylay
her and dra w her into the kitchen for ((a little cha t ". A ltho ugh she was
tired and would have liked to have rested before the e vening per-
formance, she was unable to say no. Because times were s till hardfor
the Germans after the war she ((had" to in vite the whole fam ily - the
housewife, an older daughter, the son and a da ughter-in -la w who was
not really accepted by the fam ily and who revenged herself with ar­
rogan t demands - to partake of her coffee, coffee still being some­
thing of a rare luxury at that time. The da ughter adm ired with visible
envy the dresses of the patient un til she finally gave her one of them,
one that she still liked to wear. The son flirted with her and although
she was not at all interested in him she occasionally ((had "to exchange
speaking g lances with h im in order not to disappoin t him and finally
she ((had " to dra w the daugh ter-in -law in to con versation in order to
alleviate the tangible intrafamilial tensions. After almost two hours
of wasted time, she would escape exha usted to her room and begin
to eat with a ravenous and addicted appetite. Th is greed led to her
stealing sweets from the lockers of her fellow dancers and finally to
her seeking therapy.

ID
ID

E x a m p l es : 93
ID
 There are often environmental influences in the biographical
background of depressive persons that have impeded or made
more difficult the child's development towards an autonomous
self. This patient had also been an only child in an unhappy mar­
riage and had had to learn from an early age to withdraw into the
background and to understand the problems of the parents be­
fore she had had a chance to discover and develop her own be­
ing. Now an example of the spoiling environment:

Mr. S. was also the only child of h is paren ts in an averagely good mar­
riage. His mother, who had few interests of her own, was not unhap ­
py in h er marriage b u t i n some way unclear to herself was n o t q u ite
fulfilled. When the child was born after several years, she thre w h er-
selfon it with the whole weight of her unfulfilled desires and it became
her most important life -interest. She sheltered him as the apple of her
eye, was overprotective and strove to shield h im from e veryth ing that
in her eyes was rough, hard and dangerous. And what things she saw
as dangerous ! If the wind freshened she predicted pneumonia and
wrapped h im so warmly that h is school comrades split their sides
la ughing (which mothers like this never understand). If the child played
in the sand, it wasfull of treachero us bacteria. Riding a bike ? How easy
tofall off and break bones or be run over by a car! Trips with the school
or with frien ds - what dangers lurked there, starting with spending
the n ight in a barn and witho ut the good, n utritious and healthy
mother's cooking and leading maybe to kidnapping and homosexual
attacks ! She bathed her son until after puberty, scrubbed h is back,
brought h im breakfast in bed - in short he lived in the land of m ilk
and h oney but at the price of n ot being allowed to have a will of h is
own and not being able to gro w into man 's estate.
Once, around puberty, he made an attempt at rebellion. Against
the wishes of h is mother, he wan ted to undertake a long bicycle trip
with some friends. She stood in front of the cellar door behind which
the bicycle was locked and cried with dramatic pathos "only o ver my
dead body! " The son capitulated and was rewarded with h is favourite
dish and q uantities ofmotherly caresses. After puberty the mother was
not sparing with warnings against girls. In alternating versions the
essence was, "They only wan t your money': "Don 't let yourself be
ca ugh t they want to get married so thatyou 'll take care of them. They

94 : The d e p res s i ve p e r s o n
•
know you will inherit e verything and are only coun ting on your for­
tune " ad infinitum. Naturally, as soon as he began to be interested in
girls, none of them stood up to the critical gaze of the m other. She
found someth ing wrong with all of them; one came from "a bad back-
ground" others were dressed too daringly and erotically and were there­
fore out of the q uestion, others weren 't respectful enoug h to her and
ultimately 'you are too good for any of them ". She den igrated all of
them to h im and, as he was used to seeing the world thro ugh her eyes,
he came to the conclusion that she was righ t while at the same time
rationalizing h is fear of making a conq uest of a girl.
To h is m isfortune, hisfather died when Mr. S. wasfifteen. This sealed
hisfatefor the time being. Now the mother had only h im and he could
not leave her by herself as h e was given to understand in various, but
in variably adamant tones. He sufferedfeelings ofguilt when he stayed
out a little longer in the evenings mother would be so worried! He
spen t all h is weekends and holidays with her. When he left home to
study in a n earby city there was a heartbreaking farewell as if he were
leavingfor anothercon tinent or as ifit were th efinalfare well although
they had already arranged that he would come home every weekend.
His mother knew e verything about h im . Not because he was par­
ticularly com m un icative but because she always wormed e verything
out of h im, it had become second nature to tell her everything. The
mother was proud to be able to say, "My son has no secrets from me ".
He himself was so used to th is lack of distance that he found nothing
strange in the fact that she opened and read h is letters as a matter of
course. If e very now and again an in ternal or external threat to this
shared life reared its head, then the mother became ill atjust the right
moment and bound her son even more tightly to her.
So he gre w up as the eternal son. His few uns uccessful attempts to
cut the umbilical cord were experienced withfeelings ofg uiltfostered
by the mother and were soon abandoned. In life otherwise he also re ­
mained the ''good son ': an upright fool, friendly and obliging but
somewhat colourless and sexless. He developed an increasing fear of
women and was clumsy and shy in their presence. He had no idea of
how to court a woman as he had only e ver learned the good-son be ­
haviour and was, therefore, m ost at ease with older, motherly women.
He was on safe ground here, as women they did not appear to h im to
be dangerous, and they were delighted with the polite and consider-

III

E x a m p les : 95
III
 ate young man. !fa woman ofa s uitable age became interested in h im
and attempted to approach him, he would hide beh in d h is mothers
warnings that sounded in h is inner ear at the hint ofdanger: She 's only
after my money. Th us the emptiness of h is life and what was for h im
the increasingly embarrassing sensation of being unable to make
friends with men or wom en perpetuated the situation and contin ued
to bind h im to his mother who, at h is expense, remained surprisingly
youthful in this satisfying {{marriage " with her son -lover.
On the other hand, due to the spoiling, he was immensely de ­
manding, q uite unconsciously beca use it had become second nature
and takenfor gran ted. Afterfinish ing h is studies,friends of h is father
offered h im ajob as salesman in a big company. Due to h is mother's
overestimation of him, and certainly in compensation for h is weak­
nesses, he thought of h imself as someth ing quite special wh ich oth ­
ers ought to recognize without h is having to prove anything. He was
sensitive to criticism and annoyed h is superiors with h is arrogant be ­
haviour. However, due to h is polite manner, he quickly won customers
even tho ugh h is kno wledge and expertise in the {{s ubject "were not par­
ticularly good. He had the ten dency to postpone tasks, occasionally
(th is was possible as a travelling salesman) taking the afternoon off
to sit in a cafe, go s wimm ing or to the cinema. Naturally, this hin dered
h is rising in h is job as fast as he thought he should, but he assumed it
was because his superiors did not recogn ize or appreciate h is skills.
On one of h is business trips and under the influence of alcohol he was
finally seduced by a girl but found h imself to be impotent e ven after
repeated attempts. This became the inducement to seek help in psy­
chotherapy - and this against the wishes of h is mother, wh ich signi­
fied a great deal for h im and was prognostically a good sign.

A woman in her early forties wrote to me regarding psychothera­

peutic treatment. We had already had a preliminary talk after
which she wrote me the following letter (I had asked her, among
other things, what she hoped to gain from the treatment):

{{My ch ildhood was so frigh tening that it would have had catastroph ­
ic consequences if! had experienced itfully conscious; this is why ! have
slipped under the surface of the water, so to speak. ! hope thatyou will
drive a way the ghosts, p ull me to lan d and teach me order in manag -

96 : T h e dep res s i ve p e r s o n
•
ing my time and with regard to the people and things surrounding me;
and that you will help me in the strugg le against sleeping pills, n ico ­
tine and alcohol and teach me to assert myself towards other people
even when I hold opin ions different to theirs, instead of harbouring
those mountains ofnegative emotions in my depths that cost so m uch
energy. I have to battle against great resistance which has never been
taken seriously, probably because I am outwardly so compliant. I still
have no real connection to work and am exceedingly lazy. For me, the
relationsh ip to myfather was probably the most serious in my child­
hood. And still he remains h idden and never appears to me in dreams. "

Behind this self-portrayal stands what we can call a truly tragic

childhood.

The father was mentally ill and, un til h is death (at which time the pa ­
tient was twelve), lived in the family with a male n urse. He was also an
alcoholic and when under the influence of drink would have outbursts
of violent temper and attacks of man iacal fury wh ich the child was
witness to. The mother was very unstable and when pregnant with the
three -year-younger brother fell ill with a puerperal psychosis leaving
her for a long period with severe obsessions {for example, she m ust
kill her children by the cruel method ofdrilling a needle into their heads}.
It was in this atmosphere, when she was five years old, that the fol­
lowing incident took place: In one of h is violent outbursts the father
flung into the room where she was sitting with her mother, shot a re ­
volver at her narrowly m issing the top of her head, and ran out of the
room again . The mother wanted to call the police or a doctor but the
child said: ((L et 's tell Daddy, he will help us ".

Here, the child's threshold of tolerance had obviously been over­

stepped so that it could only cope with its fear by disassociating
its perceptions from its feelings. We now better understand the
sentence in the letter where she says that it would have been a ca­
tastrophe if she had experienced her childhood while fully con­
scious. We understand also why the father remained hidden in
her memories and did not appear to her in dreams either. It would
have been unbearable for her to connect the experienced threat
and anxiety consciously with the father - this would have deliv-

•
•
E x a m p l es : 97
•
 ered her unconditionally to her fear and insecurity. So she un­
dertook the leap from consciousness and saved the image of a
good and protective father by splitting off the threatening side of
him as if it had been a stranger who had threatened her; if she
now turned to him for help the threat was disassociated from him
and he could remain in her consciousness as the helping father
whom she so desperately needed. But what degree of fear and
desperation must be necessary in order that a child could per­
form such an act, must perform such an act, in order to cope with
the incident! Naturally, this scene was a particularly traumatic
and tormenting experience; but one can imagine how insecure,
anxious and desperate the reality of her childhood must have been
otherwise. Where could she have fled to, where could she have
found real protection ? What remained - in addition to the ad­
dictions mentioned above - was a life as if in a dream. She never
really existed completely in reality; as a shield against expected,
always imminent dangers and threats she never looked closely or
sharply at anything, withdrew her feelings of sympathy for the
world in order never to be assaulted so traumatically again. Her
addictions were also ultimately the expression of removing-one­
self-from-reality, preferably into the state of not having been born
at all. One can, therefore, understand her image of wrapping her
hands around her knees and letting herself glide into a lake with
open eyes and gazing up at the sky through the water which she
experienced with a profound feeling of joy. Thus she saved her­
self by retreating into what amounts to a sleepwalking life in or­
der to survive reality at all, thus she stood between depression
and psychosis which were to protect her from further unbear­
able clashes with reality.

A thirty-two year old diplomat camefor therapyfor long -standing im ­

potence. After learning that potency disorders (there were no organic
findings in h is case) are not only an individual problem but are also
partner-related, the following background to the disorder emerged:
When he came home from work in the even ings he would bathe,
change andfeed his eighteen -month old son while his wife lay on the
sofa reading and smoking. He was the m iddle brother of three; the old­
est was an active and aggressive boy, wild and difficult to con trol and

98 : T h e d e p res s i ve per s o n
•
was therefore rejected by the mother. With the instinct C?f a child, he
sensed how his mother would like him to be: as the good son who did
e verything to please her. He renounced all boyishness, all masculinity
and instead helped h is m other in the kitchen, kept h imself clean and
tidy and became her darling thereby cutting out h is older brother
but at the cost of h is masculinity. He carried this behaviour ofthe good
son in to h is marriage - here also he was more the good son than the
h usband, contin ued to play the role already learned there by o vertax­
ing h imself and allowing h imself to be o vertaxed by h is wife without
being able to express h is anger for fear of losing her love, as would
have been the case with h is mother, by rebelling against her. He had
not learned to demand somethingfor h imself or to say n o. His symp­
tom was a solutionfor all conflicts: It was h is revenge and h e punished
h is wife by no longer being able to satisfy her, but without having to
feel g uilty because, after all, it was a "physical problem " wh ich was not
h is fault. At the same time it was a self-punishmen tfor h is h idden ag ­
gression towards his wife - naturally all of this was subconscious. Once
he understood the connection, it led to an outbreak. He got drunkfor
the first time in h is life, smoked h is first cigar (his mother did not like
smoking and drinking so for her sake he had always abstained) and,
for the first time in h is marriage, came home in a very merry state at
four in the m orning instead of straight from work as usual. His wife
was alarmed but glad that he had come home and, as she was ultim ­
ately a sensible woman who wanted a real man and not a son, she
took h im in her arms laugh ing, seduced h im, and they had their first
s uccessful intercourse in a long time.

S u m m in g u p

he examples will have shown what forms anxiety and anx­

T iety avoidance take in the case of depressive personalities
in principle. The second basic form of anxiety, the fear of "self­
rotation", of subj ect-being, with the resulting fear of loss and fear
of being left alone, of loneliness, is markedly distinct from the
contrasting fear of closeness and commitment of the schizoids.
If one draws back from self-becoming, from individuation, one

Cl
Cl
Summing up : 99
Cl
 remains in the position of owing something vital to one's human
essence and will become increasingly an obj ect in life. The will­
ingness to labour under a sense of guilt shown by depressive per­
sons is probably related to the fact that they feel they can avoid
one of the greatest challenges of life by not becoming complete­
ly adult.
Let us attempt to round out the clinical picture of depressive
personalities. If, in avoidance of individuation, the depressive lives
the aspect of commitment supervalently, the usual result - as we
have seen - is that the other assumes an exaggerated value while
correspondingly he or she loses value. Seen positively; to begin
with, this deferral of one's own ego generates everything that lies
in the area of understanding, empathy, sympathy and compas­
sion. One always thinks of others first, of their situation and in­
terests, feels at one with them - up to and including identifica­
tion. This enables a deep understanding to develop for what is
alien, that is, an ability to put oneself in another's place which is
initially something very positive. The actual depressive, however,
remains stuck, in a manner of speaking, in the identification and
does not return to him or herself. This results in their losing too
much of their own autonomy and perhaps becoming merely
an echo of the other - one could say they misunderstand the
Christian precept "love your neighbour as yourself" to mean
" more than yourse If" .
The world and people being what they are, those having such
an attitude are usually taken unfair advantage of fairly quickly.
The expectation that others have the same attitude as oneself, are
just as considerate, compassionate and adaptable, is only rarely
fulfilled. On the contrary, one realizes that others are much more
unabashedly egotistical and with this attitude, therefore, achieve
even more in life. Here lies the critical point - we have already
described it - one makes a virtue of necessity and must raise one's
behaviour to an ideology in order to cope with one's envy of oth­
ers by drawing consolation from the fact that one is morally su­
perior. It takes a lot of character to concede to others without
envy what one forbids oneself or cannot achieve - unless of course
such attitudes correspond to collective or religious ideals, as is
the case in some of the teachings of Christianity.

1 00 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n
•
 The ideologies of depressive persons are - as is ultimately true
of all ideologies - difficult to correct. The reason they do not want
to give them up is because they have cost so much in renunci­
ation and envy-processing. There is also the moral satisfaction
they draw from them - and, finally, one cannot suddenly begin to
do what one has been so quick to reject and condemn in others.
Here also one must count the fact that there are so many ways of
dealing with the world and people in which depressives are inex­
perienced and unskilled and that for this reason alone they do not
dare. A little life-technique is lacking in them which means they
always fall back into old grooves. Thus one is caught increasing­
ly in the meshes of one's ideology, which does not offer a real
solution anyway because it is constructed to bridge a weakness,
an anxiety. The ability for true sublimation as expressed in the
words of Goethe seldom exists; those who are unassuming and
modest because it is demanded by an ideology will not be able to
avoid envy, in bitterness at the "unjustness" of life.
Everyday life contains an abundance of what are actually ba­
nal, unimportant situations in which depressive behaviour in its
neurotic sense is manifested and which can dig the ruts deeper,
but once one begins to pay attention to them they can be changed.
If a depressive has guests, for instance, or is a guest in someone
else's house, he or she will always have the feeling of being sole­
ly responsible for the success of the evening, of having to keep
the conversation going. They will suffer from feelings of infer­
iority or guilt if the invitation is not really successful; but it is just
these constrained efforts that pre-empt a relaxed atmosphere.
They will not stop to consider that others will also contribute to
the evening and that luck also plays a part in whether something
is " successful" or not - they always feel responsible for too much.
Thus, a patient always found himself in a tormenting situation
when he introduced a new acquaintance to his friends. He was
unable to do this in a relaxed manner but instead was always wor­
ried if the friends would like the new person and if this person
would like his friends. If he went to a concert he could not sit
back and enjoy it; he identified with the artist as well as with the
audience in the double anxiety that the artist might fail and dis­
appoint the audience or that the artist might be disappointed in

11
11
Summing up : 1 01
11
 the audience's lack of applause. He could never really be himself
but was always suspended in a peculiar indeterminate position
between himself and others, unconsciously repeating the situ­
ation of his early years in which he always had to empathize with
the people in his surroundings, to understand and to satisfy them
while retreating himself to the background in order not to risk
losing the little security or love offered by them. What might ap­
pear here as an example of self-referentiality is what we saw in
the case of the schizoids, although apparently coming from a com­
pletely different orientation. In their case, a delusion of reference
can arise from lack of social contact. With depressives, the ap­
parent self-centeredness is, in truth, an extreme other-centered­
ness: If they feel responsible for everything, it is not from meg­
alomania but, on the contrary, from a lack of ego-strength which
makes them live more in others than in themselves.
It is quite understandable that ultimately bodily symptoms
can arise, as a final - unconscious and therefore not experienced
with guilt - self-protection from allowing themselves to be over­
taxed, a situation that they cannot escape in any other way. Such
people can deeply enjoy a sickness and a stay in hospital - final­
ly they are also justified in having others care for them and not
having to do anything themselves - as long as they can manage
not to blame themselves and guiltily feel that they have "failed"
by becoming ill.
The subject-being which is not lived thus leads almost in­
evitably to a having-to-hate based on envy, on helpless weakness
and on bitterness from being taken advantage of. It then appears
as though a possible rescue from such feelings, which are tor­
menting and experienced with guilt, must consist of developing
an ideology of humility, modesty, peaceableness and frugality;
thus hoping to find peace in oneself, but this is a continually en­
dangered peace underneath which the suppressed negative emo­
tions smoulder. It would be worth undertaking a special study to
discover why Christianity, which calls itself the religion of love,
features so much hate, cruelty and war in its history. Could this
be connected with the Christian ideology of humility? This has
always been exploited by the power of the church in order to
keep the believers in subjugation with the promise of reward in

1 02 : T h e d e p res s ive per s o n

•
the hereafter for their humility in the present. The feelings of hate
and envy that nevertheless remain are then sanctioned in a now
"legitimate" intolerance in the fight against unbelievers or apos­
tates, such as demonstrated in the persecution of witches and
heretics and in the Inquisition in which a monstrous sadism ran
rIot.
Any ideology becomes dangerous when it simplistically ab­
solutizes one of the basic impulses or attempts to exclude anoth­
er one; this will result in it inevitably constellating all the more
surely with the one avoided. Our soul, our subconscious, has a
particular ability for giving us an indication of such unilateral­
ities which signify an endangerment of the fruitful tension between
the antinomian powers that is called life: by dreams and slips of
the tongue, by encounters with partners and particularly through
our anxieties - if we can only learn to interpret them correctly.
Thus the over-humble and peaceable have dreams in which what
is suppressed appears in an extreme form, usually transferred to
another person but as an indication of what he or she should in­
tegrate into themselves. A similar summons to completion can
lie in the choice of partner as one is often strongly drawn to the
opposing type, even fascinated, because one subconsciously has
an inkling that one can learn from him or her what one does not
venture to live oneself - at least the possibility is inherent in this
situation. We will be returning to this later.
Again and again, in the study of the basic impulses, we en­
counter the phep.o menon that the not-lived, suppressed impulse
is then constellated internally or externally. Either one encoun­
ters a situation or a partner and an irresolvable conflict results
from lack of the courage to subj ect-being, or one reaches one's
threshold of tolerance and is thereby forced into different be­
haviour. This can lead to outbreaks of the suppressed impulses
which are now destructive from being dammed up. All parts of
our soul not integrated into the personality can, in a manner of
speaking, become independent and express themselves in an ar­
chaic manner as we have seen in the case of the young woman
with the addictive urges to eat and steal.
In the depressive personality structure too, there is a type of
person with a perfectly normal depressive impact that we can still

..
41

Summing up : 1 03
41
 consider healthy; the manifestation of the depressive personal­
ity can range from light, to severe and most severe, through to the
most extreme. We can outline them as follows: contemplation,
tranquillity, introversion -- humility, shyness - inhibition in de­
manding and asserting oneself - laziness and a receptive passiv­
ity - a passive expectatory mental set (taking Cockaigne for
granted) - hopelessness - depression - melancholia. Not rarely,
the final point of this linear progression is suicide or total apathy
and indolence or evasive action via an addiction, which, however,
only temporarily strengthens the ego and lifts the depression. The
manic depressive mood disorder - characteristically we speak here
of a mood disorder or affective psychosis and not, as in the case
of a schizoid, a mental disorder which shows that the genesis of
these two illnesses arise on different levels - often reflects the
biographical background particularly clearly in the alternating
manic-euphoric and depressive-despondent phases ("up one
minute - down the next"). In the manic phase, all inhibitions and
attitudes of renunciation are in abeyance, the subject is exaltedly
cheerful, goes shopping, runs up debts, is extravagant and full of
optimism - until the depressive phase kicks in and everything is
reversed and he or she falls into self-accusation, despondency,
resignation and apathy. If in life a certain rhythmic alternation
between euphoria and despondency is the case, for these ill per­
sons we often find a particularly abrupt alternation between
hopeful glimpses of light and hopeless desperation in their bio­
graphy, while in the case of melancholia only hopelessness exists.
Depressive persons are often religious; in religion they are
drawn most strongly by the image of salvation, the deliverance
from suffering and the forgiving of their guilt. Their yearning of­
ten tends towards the mystic experience of being one with the
universe, a unity that they hope to find via the meditative path.
In addition to the Christian religion, which appeals to them with
its dogma of humility and of purification through suffering, they
often feel an affinity to Buddhism and its renunciation of the
world. All forms of belief which propagate self-forgetting and
the dissolution of the ego exert a pull on them. In a more child­
ish form they believe that, as they could not create a fulfilled life
here on earth, they will find a better in the hereafter, and that

1 04 : T h e d e p res s i ve pers o n
•
those who humbled themselves here, or were humbled by oth­
ers, will find a hearing there. Since the growth of scepticism re­
garding such an equalizing justice in the beyond, it has become
increasingly difficult to find young trainees for the professions
that require great self-sacrifice and self-denial such as the care­
giving ones. Perhaps it is depressives who have had the hardest
time enduring the undermining of their faith, possibly induced
by knowledge revealed by modern natural sciences. Their faith
gives meaning to their life and upholds them. The often one-sided
sciences, accentuating the rational, measurable and provable, de­
preciate belief and attempt to "ascribe " religious feelings to a nar­
row, non-metaphysical psychologizing or declare them to be
naIvete or purely wishful thinking. The depressive often does not
realize that these sciences with their quantative and causal meth­
ods can only measure a limited partial aspect of life and the world,
the dead aspect of nature. A science which has the subjugation
of nature as its main aim will be caught in its own net sooner or
later - signs of which we can already observe.
On the other hand, depressives tend to leave much up to God
and the Devil. We carry heaven and hell within ourselves, also the
responsibility for them; as we learn to recognize evil within our­
selves, to accept it and to struggle against it, not projecting it onto
the devil or other enemy image. We should also learn to search
for the good in ourselves, the divine essence and to try to realize
it for its own sake and our own sake, not for a reward in the here­
after. Depressive persons see all too easily, and in everything, too
often the "will of God" and divine dispensation, and elude self­
responsibility in a misconceived humility. In pathological cases,
depressives can suffer from religious mania, identification with
Christ, Messianic delusion and similar manifestations.
The healthy person with depressive impact can achieve great
ardour and depth in their religiosity, which not infrequently
makes mystic experiences possible. Death is experienced by them
as a sal�ation and here we most often find the humility of dying.
"Thy will be done" can lead to submission to whatever destiny
might bring which signifies great strength. Thus, such a person
often has an attitude of acceptance toward fate, assuming in it its
most mature form rather the sense of amor fati; he or she will eas-

..
..

Summing up : 1 05
..
 ily tend toward seeing blows of fate almost too exclusively as
being related to their own guilt. They are prepared for penance
and can easily become the victim of those who know how to
exploit this.
In ethical issues, they often take commandments and inter­
dictions too literally, feel overtaxed thereby and thus confirmed
in their willingness to accept feelings of guilt. Renunciation, self­
denial, sacrifice and ascetism suit them, but they can also become
a means of avoiding having to deal with the world. As always,
here too our life is lived on a knife's edge and it is always only a
small step from the real to the unreal. As parents and educators,
people with depressive structure attributes are good at interper­
sonal relations and strive to empathize with the child and to un­
derstand it. The danger lies in their binding the child too close to
them due to their life-anxiety and fear of loss; they are overpro­
tective and do not maintain an adequate distance. They have dif­
ficulty letting the child go at the age-appropriate stages necessary
for its development. It is difficult for them to be consistent, and,
if necessary, severe; they pamper the child in the wrong way, do
not like to ask anything of it because they are afraid of losing its
love. The questionability of ties that are too close can be illus­
trated in them most clearly. Mothers who suffered a deprived
childhood often have the attitude, "My child is going to have it
better than I did", and then proceed to provide too much of a
good thing.
Professionally they tend to follow the " motherly" and caring
careers, the helping, serving, nursing ones where - self-sacrifi­
cing, patient and compassionate as they are - they have the great­
est opportunities for development. They feel best in social and
caring, medicinal and psychotherapeutic, and charitable occupa­
tions. They can "wait" in the good double sense of the word; that
is: wait with patience and then wait on others, as in nursing, as is
inherent in the word. As doctors, priests and pedagogues etcetera,
they are those who choose these professions less from financial
motives or those of prestige than from a sense of vocation; to them,
their profession is rarely just a j ob. They are to be found also
among the gardeners, foresters, innkeepers, in the food industry
and related "motherly" occupations.

1 06 : The d e p res s i ve pers o n

.
 The dreams of depressive persons - insofar as they are seen as
specific to the personality structure - are often indicative of the
theme of eating, frequently in combination with disappointments
and resignation which illustrate the not-venturing to reach out
and grasp. In the dream, for instance, they arrive at a banquet,
but there is no room for them or no place has been set, or every­
thing has been eaten already - situations that we can correlate to
that of Tantalus. The inhibition to reach for something is also ex­
pressed in the dream with a desire, commencing with an impulse,
which is impeded by many obstacles so that the dreamer cannot
reach his or her goal even in a dream and must do without. Those
who cannot seize for themselves are dependent on having their
wishes fulfilled by others. This is the background for dreams of
Cockaigne where everything is to be had just for the wishing;
thus they are confronted with their own laziness and passive de­
mands. Or they dream of being pursued by pirates, robbers and
thieves, showing their own leanings toward robbing and stealing
as a distorted form of their pathological not-being-able-to-take.
The theme of self-overtaxing or allowing themselves to be over­
taxed by others which was so decisive for the genesis of their de­
pression is reflected in dreams such as in the following one:
Ifl
am hiking in the mountains with my father; the path is very steep,
I am carrying the rucksack as well as h is coat and a parcel with be ­
longings of h is. JJ

The healthy person with these structures is characterized by em­

pathy and a willingness to help others, to " accept" them. Caring,
helpful and understanding attitudes are distinguishing attributes.
They can forgive, wait patiently for things to mature and do not
have a m\rkedly developed egoism. They are affectionate in their
emotional relationships; have simple and undemanding needs, and
necessary sacrifices are not seen as a hardship. They see life, on
the other hand, as difficult but manage to develop a sense of hu­
mour as a counterbalance, a humour in the sense of "It's humour
if you laugh in spite of everything ". He or she often develops a
profound piety, not necessarily in the ecclesiastical sense but as
more of a life-piety that understands our dependencies and en­
dangerments but still says yes to life and loves it. Endurance and

•
•
Summing up : 1 07
•
 being able to bear up under strain are two of their main virtues.
One could recommend the words of Spitteler from his
"Prometheus and Epimetheus" to depressive persons, of being
"bashfully mindful of their own worth" - they hide their light
under a bushel so that they have to be "discovered". They are of­
ten the still waters that run deep; emotionality, a depth of emo­
tion and warmth are among their most beautiful characteristics.
In their innermost being they are thankful for what they have;
their successes they ascribe less to their own self and to their skills
than seeing them as a gift and a blessing, thereby living humility
In Its true sense.

1 08 : T h e d e p re s s i ve pe r s o n
•
 Fear of c h ange
The compul sive personalities

"J u st o n ce t o be s t o ne!
J u s t o n ce to be per m a n e n t ! "
Hes se

he yearning for permanence is a very early and very profound

T one in us. As we have seen, the reliable recurrence of what is
familiar and trusted in our childhood is of enormous importance
for our development. It is what makes possible the unfolding of
specifically human characteristics, our emotional and feeling side
and our ability to love; it allows us to learn to trust and to hope.
We saw in the schizoid personalities how frequent changes of the
person of reference or the extended loss of a main person of ref­
erence at a very early age can cause these areas to remain under­
developed or to degenerate. Permanence and the reliable repeti­
tion of the same impressions are also just as important for the de­
velopment of our memory, for recognition and experience, and
for orientation in the world generally. A chaotic world with no
recognizable and reliable order or physical laws would not allow
us to unfold such skills in the first place - an inner chaos would
correspond to the outer chaos. Thus it appears that secure know­
ledge and the opportunity to acquire a valid cognizance are like
the soul's inner reflection of, or correspondence to, the orders
and physical laws of our cosmic system. A landing on the moon
would never have been possible, for instance, if the moon were
to describe an arbitrary and erratic orbit following a path obey­
ing no recognizable laws.

Fea r of c h a n ge : 1 09
•
 The striving for permanence is therefore an integral part of
our being; together with the yearning for the everlasting constancy
of a loved being who loves us in return, it is certainly at the root
of religious feelings. In the idea of the timelessness, eternity and
omnipresence of a divine being, humankind has fulfilled this need
for permanence. Just how deep this need is in us is not always
evident; but we experience it immediately when the familiar, the
habitual, what we have taken to be unalterable suddenly begins
to change or even threatens to stop altogether, to cease to exist.
Then the dread hand of transience reaches for us and we become
conscious of our dependency, our impermanence.
Now we will turn to the description of the third form of anx­
iety intimated here: the fear of change. It befalls us all the more
severely, the more we try to insure against it.
Let us illustrate first of all what the consequences can be when
a person experiences the fear of change supervalently or, seen from
the aspect of the impulses, attempts to live the striving toward
permanence and security supervalently - in the language of our
allegory, that is, accentuates the centripetal force which unilat­
erally corresponds to gravity.
The most general result will be that such a person has the ten­
dency to leave everything as it is. Changes of any kind remind
them of transience which they are trying to avoid at all costs. This
is why they always try to rediscover or re-create the same thing,
what is already known and familiar. If something changes they
feel disturbed, unsettled, even anxious. This is why they will en­
deavour to prevent changes, to halt or to restrict them and when
possible, to impede and fight against them. They challenge innov­
ations where they find them, which becomes increasingly a
Sisyphean task as life is always in flux, everything is in a state of
constant change, " everything flows " in a ceaseless ebb and flow
that cannot be halted.
What form will such an attempt take ? For instance, one might
hold indomitably to opinions, experiences, attitudes, tenets and
habits and if possible try to turn them into an eternal principle, an
incontrovertible decree, an "immutable law". New experiences will
be avoided, or, if this is not practicable, one will reinterpret them
and seek to assimilate them into what one knows and is conver-

1 10 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n a l i t ies
•
sant with. This can result in conscious or unconscious dishonesty
by, for instance, overlooking details of the new, tendentiously mis­
understanding them or simply emotionally rejecting them with
already threadbare excuses which reveal the fact that the true is­
sue is not objectivity but the salvation of a cherished attitude which
may not be shaken. The history of science is full of examples of
this and of fruitless arguments about who is "right".
If one holds so fast to the familiar and habitual, one unavoid­
ably approaches all things new with a prejudice that is meant to
protect one from the unusual and the unknown. One does not
fall prey to the danger of accepting things without proof in a naIve
faith in progress. However, one is all the more subj ect to the oth­
er danger of not being open enough to what is new, thereby re­
tarding developments - also one's own - inhibiting and maybe
even forestalling them altogether.
We can thus recognize the fundamental problem of compul­
sive personalities in their supervalent need for security. Caution,
forethought, a focus on goals and long-term planning - attitudes
of permanence generally - are connected with this. From the as­
pect of anxiety, we can describe their fear as fear of risk, of change
and transience. They resemble the man who did not want to en­
ter the water until he had learned to swim - they are, so to speak,
�.

the "dry-runners " in life. These patterns of behaviour and atti-

tudes can take on all degrees of severity and manifest themselves
in the most peculiar forms.

There was a man in h is m id-thirties who possessed a comprehensive

library. Nevertheless, he always went to lending libraries and did not
use his o wn books for the "reason that he m ight one day be relocat­
JJ

ed to a place with no lending library - what would he do if had read

all h is own books already ? Here,foresight and the fear of someth ing
coming to an end have taken on quite a grotesque form.

Some people with compulsive traits have cupboards full of clothes

but always wear the same old things in order to have "reserves "
on hand. Their heart aches when they have to use something new
- they would rather risk the saved clothes being out of fashion
or eaten by moths or never even being worn. To use something

..

Fea r o f c h a n ge : 111
..
 new would be to commit oneself to time and therefore to its
ephemerality, to use time up and therefore be able to see the end
of it. Everything that comes to an end reminds us of transience
and ultimately of death.
We all carry this fear in ourselves and the wish for permanence
and immortality; we are all searching for something eternal and
have a deep sense of satisfaction when we find things as we ex­
pect them, as we left them. This explains our collecting instinct:
Whatever one collects - be it postage stamps, coins or porcelain -
an often subconscious motive is to have a little piece of eternity,
a guarantee of infinity, as one will never be able to finish one's
collection, there will always be some items missing. Others seek
permanence and eternity in inventions that promise to prolong
life or in the search for the perpetuum mobile; or, one elevates
one's own views and theories into a coherent and timeless phil­
osophy, thereby gaining something which will withstand time in
the striving towards eternal validity. Merely our holding on to
beloved habits and our touchiness when we are forced to change
them or when they are disturbed makes this desire for perma­
nence visible.
We can find the same tendency to avoid the fear of change and
transience in the rigid holding on to traditions, and this in all
imaginable areas. Traditions of the familial, social, moral, political,
scientific and religious kind lead to dogmatism, conservatism, to
principles, prejudices and to various forms of fanaticism. The more
rigidly one advocates these, the more intolerant one is towards
those who attack or question them. Behind this is always the fear
that what is habitual, learned, believed and recognized, what gives
one security, could be relativized by new insight; a fear that de­
velopments would prove these beliefs to be an illusion or error,
and one would for this reason be forced to adapt or change one­
self. The narrower one's own horizon and living environment is,
the more one wants to keep it unchanged and the more one must
be afraid of losing one's security due to new developments.
Thus, the more we attempt to hold fast to the old, the more
we must sense the fear of transience; the more we resist new de­
velopments, the more surely and sharply we will constellate the
counterforces. This can be seen especially clearly in the conflicts

112 : T h e c o m p u l s ive pe r s o n a l i t ies

•
between the generations: It is the tenacity with which the older
generation holds onto the old and its brusque rej ection of the new
that often forces the younger generation into extreme patterns of
behaviour.
Naturally, tradition and adherence to recognized values have,
on the face of it, a positive significance; we should and must search
for enduring principles and absolutes - only in this way can we
discover the timeless physical laws. But here we are dealing with
too much of a good thing and with a lack of the ability or will­
ingness to consider a new orientation. We are baulking against
developments that are due, and against adding to and correcting
experiences which life continually compels us to do. The old truth
"tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis " - The times change
and we)change with them - is not valid for compulsive personal­
ities. They will pay for their striving for a rigid preservation of
the status quo with a fear of any change. They endeavour to force
life into schemata and rules and launch intolerance and stubborn
rejection against anything that makes them uneasy because it is
new and differs from what they know. But when one attempts to
compel something, it can in its turn become compulsive.
Thus, behind every habit, behind every dogma and fanaticism
there is always anxiety, the fear of change and mutability and ul­
timately the fear of death. This is why compulsive people have
great difficulty in accepting that something or someone can evade
their power, is not subj ect to their will. They would like to co­
erce everyone and everything to be as, in their opinion, they ought
to be. This of course results in failure in life and what they have
attempted to coerce returns to them like a boomerang as a com­
pulsion. If one wants to compel something living, if one cannot
accept anything happening to oneself because one must always
be the determining agent then one is increasingly forced to be
constantly on the alert to make sure that nothing changes or eludes
one's will. Thus, with noteworthy consistency, the coercer be­
comes the coerced, wherein we can probably recognize once again
life's power to balance a unilateralism.
The compulsive person has difficulty accepting that in the
realm of the living there is no absolutism, there are no immutable
principles, that life cannot be determined predictably. They be-

Fea r of c h a n ge : 113
•
 lieve they can capture everything in one system in order to have
it under their eyes and to rule it, thereby violating the laws of na­
ture - Nietzsche once said that the will towards a system always
contains something spurious just because one is simplifying the
rich diversity of life by force.
In the area of interpersonal relationships, compulsive patterns
of behaviour follow a similar course. Consciously or uncon­
sciously one attempts to dictate to others how one would like
them to be. This becomes most conspicuous in the relations to
the partner, dependents and children. The generation gap, the con­
flict between the generations, is constellated in these persons par­
ticularly harshly, as we have indicated above. Because they reject
or want to suppress everything new, unaccustomed or unusual,
they easily keep up their attitude ad absurdum thereby calling
the dreaded counterforces into the field, the rebels and revolu­
tionaries who on their part now think they must fight them with
the weapons of the other extreme, frequently throwing the baby
out with the bath water. Herein lies a small, common human
tragedy, but not an insurmountable one if one is willing to accept
the new and to try to understand it.
These people are always afraid that everything will become
insecure and slide into chaos if they were to loosen their grip for
only a moment, were to open themselves a little to difference,
yield only briefly or were to spontaneously be themselves with­
out the constant need for self-control and extrinsic control. They
are prey to a ceaseless anxiety that what they have suppressed and
repressed in themselves or what may not be, in their opinion, in
the outside world would overwhelm everything if they would
permit it just one single time. They are like Hercules who thinks
he knows that the Hydra will grow at least two new heads for
each one he cuts off. Thus they are afraid of the "first step" which
in their imagination, once taken, will trigger the incalculable. They
are, therefore, always at pains to achieve a state, by means of pow­
er, knowledge and practice, where nothing unwilled and unfore­
seen can "happen" and live according to the motto "what if". What
will the result be if I do this or that? This makes them experts as
"dry-runners", those who never get around to living because they
are so busy safeguarding and preparing for it.

1 14 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve p e r s o n a l i t i e s
•
 A patient, asked to relax on the couch and to let his mind wan­
der, indignantly retorted, "But then the whole shit will rise to the
surface " - drastically expressing how much he had suppressed
and kept in repression with his permanent self-controlling and
"pulling himself together". Safeguarding against everything that
may not be, against everything that one wants to avoid becomes
the most important life-principle for the compulsive personal­
ity; j1nd they become very inventive in order to keep it that way.
Let us look at some examples of this:
One possibility of keeping oneself high and dry away from the
vital river of experience is procrastinating, hesitating and doubt­
ing. Here is an excerpt from the letter of one such compulsive per­
sonality - the question was whether she wanted to undergo psy­
chotherapeutic treatment with me or to go to a spa for a cure:

"Many thanks for your letter! It has plunged me into severe conflicts.
I don 't kno w if we talked about my decision making neurosis in our
first meeting - probably only very superficially.
I hadjust written to the spa, Bad X, who had requested m e to make
a decision and answer them by the 7 5th July to confirm my reserva ­
tion. ln the meantimeyour lettercame saying that perhaps I could work
with you after all. Since then I have been dithering back andforth, the
situation is abominable. The end of the story will be that Bad X will be
full if I decide to go there. Actually the decision is quite simple: I don 't
have enough money to come to Munich. I repeatedly add up the sums
that are necessary but there isjust not enough. So it won 't be possible
after all. A n d then I thin k how necessary it would be, how urgent even.
I imagine that my everlasting, apparently organic illnesses m ight take
a turn for the better and that something positive m ight come of it to
help my general condition and the difficulties that I have.
But then I have nowhere to stay in Munich. I 'm sure I could go to
Bad X again later this year - but isn 't that too strenuous, driving (from
there to Mun ich) every day ? I m ust not do that again under any cir­
cumstances whatsoever. Ifl th ink I am driving into the unknown again,
I am full of apprehension. A lthough a war is not about to take place!
I am assum ing you are horrified at my indecision . But you are an
analyst! And you know that I didn 't marry the man I liked because
I couldn 't make up my m ind to. And afterwards it was too late ! And

Fea r of c h a n ge : 1 15
•
 now the same thing is going to happen with this journey. Finally n ei­
ther one nor the other will work out. The fact remains that Munich is
worrying because of the m oney q uestion. That is a reality. lsn 't it bet­
ter to make sure of one 's finances first and then to travel in peace ? I 'm
sure I could probably have it all arranged by nextyear in May andJune.
We have only received halj-pay twice, thoughfrom now on the pay will
be normal.
I th ink I will go to Bad X, e ven ifl will be screamingfor Munich once
I get there. This is what I can afford without worry. If I now receive a
letterfrom them telling m e they couldn 't hold my reservationfor s uch
a long time, then I m ight decide to come to Mun ich after all. A n d for
this even tuality I would like to kno w if I could pay for the hours with
you on the 1 5th of Septem ber and if I could work with you from 7th
A ugust to 7th September.
What a difficult birth !!... When I write this all down I thin k I m ust
try and analyse a little bit but - th ings are the way they are.
PS., I can 't make up my m ind, it 's torture for me. I would like to see
if Bad X still has room for me. If I only knew ifyou are there until the
7th Septem ber and that I could payyou on the 1 5th. Maybe I will send
a telegram. JJ (This she did and finally made up her m ind to come for
analysis.)

One can imagine how agonizing such indecision and being un­
able to make up one's mind can become, particularly if the issue
is something more important than was the case here. One can also
see how such people make their decisions dependent on external
things - not a few count off the buttons of their j ackets or throw
dice or some such thing. We will see later how such fear of self­
responsibility can arise.
A further example of how compulsive persons put obstacles
in their path to uninhibited experiencing: in analysis, a patient is
relating a dream and then continues:

({Is there any point in giving meaning to dreams ? Everyth ing is rela ­
tive, one can read into or in terpret all kinds of things - who will tell me
that I have found the right idea ? Maybe I changed the dream when
telling it or can 't remem ber it exactly ? Doesn 't that make everything
questionable ? Dreams are only foam, dealing with them is unscien -

1 16 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n a l i t i es
•
tific. Freud andJung e ven had q uite different ideas about dreams and
interpreted them quite differently. There is obviously nothing authori­
t? tive and reliable. A nd the ideas! What sort of ideas am I s upposed to
have . . . that leads to losing control . . . one loses oneself completely
into the unknown . . . and anyway, I can 't th ink of anyth ing . . . "

The safe-guarding, the skilled rationalizing placed in front of the

experience to shield himself from it is easy to recognize here. His
fear of "losing control" is obvious. The issue was not to scientif­
ically discuss dreams at all, he had only been asked to let his ideas
come. Here, some people might think that the patient's doubts
with regard to dreams were justified, but they would be over­
looking the fact that the patient was only using them as an eva­
sive tactic; in addition to this, his doubts were by no means mere­
ly restricted to dreams - he was afraid of everything that he re­
garded as "uncertain" and sought to avoid it.
From similar motives of safeguarding something, many com­
pulsive people remain stuck in the stage of preparing for some­
thing as trenchantly illustrated by a j oke:
A man arrives in heaven and sees two doors with the signs "Door to
heaven " and "Door to lectures on heaven ". He en ters the second door.

It is a rule of the emotions that everything that we suppress accu­

mulates; this causes the internal pressure to increase and the com­
pulsive person must expend more and more time and strength in
order to hold what is suppressed in check. This results in the com­
pulsive vicious circle which can only be broken out of by accepting
the " other side", accepting what has been suppressed and deal­
ing with it. Only then can one integrate what is so avoided and
feared and maybe even experience that what was suppressed con­
tains much positive strength and that "senseless " dreams have
something very important to tell us.
One can well imagine how narrow and rigid, how based on
principles and how intolerant, how full of "iron consistency" a
person with this attitude becomes, how lacking in life their own
life will become when they try to force such absolutism and con­
ditions onto it. What the compulsive is conscious of is that they
want to represent what is "right" (like the patient who thought

Fea r o f c h a n ge : 1 17
•
 he had to find the "right" ideas, thereby making free ideas im­
possible). They are not conscious of the fear of risk concealed be­
hind this.
If one takes everything so on principle, the living order be­
comes pedantic orderliness, necessary consistency becomes ob­
stinate rigidity, sensible economy becomes miserliness and a
healthy self-will truculent stubbornness leading to despotism. If
all this is not enough to subdue the anxiety because the richness
of life does not allow itself to be captured in rigid rulings, the de­
velopment of compulsive symptoms and compulsive acts will be
the result. These originally had the function of restraining the
anxiety but gradually become independent and become an inner
must. " It" forces them onto such persons and even when they
find the compulsions senseless they can no longer desist from
them. Obsessional washing, obsessive rumination and remem­
brance, and arithmomania are some of these compulsive acts.
Whenever one attempts to refrain from a compulsion or to ter­
minate it, the anxieties tied to it are released.
As variegated as compulsions can be, it is always ultimately
the fear of risk, of insouciant spontaneity that we encounter. Al­
ways, in their genesis, is the attempt to evade something, be it
something new, unknown, unsure, forbidden; be it a temptation
or a deviation from habit. If everything stays the way it is: the
o bj ects on the desk in their hallowed order; the unshakable val­
idity of an opinion on something; a moralistic judgement in the
rigidity of an article of law; a theory as an unassailable pro­
nouncement; the faith in an unswerving absolutism - then time
seems to stand still. Then everything is predictable, the world will
remain unchanging and life will only offer a repetition of what is
known and has gone before - then what was a living and pulsing
rhythm has become a monotone and stereotyped beat. Sometimes
a certain magnanimity can lie in such attitudes, but it is a tragic
magnanimity because the obdurate desire to coerce and subdue
the forces of life, the lack of elasticity, as well as the impossibility
of the undertaking itself, already carry the seed of failure in them­
selves. Inherent in the tragedy is also the failure in the face of an
absolutism which one experiences as a genuine, apparently in­
escapable, demand that one must fulfil, or believes one must fulfil.

1 18 : T he c o m p u l s ive pers o n a l i t ies

•
 A simple example can illustrate the principle of compulsive or
obsessional behaviour where, as so often in life, tragedy and com­
edy lie close together: Try, just once, to keep a room absolutely
dust-free. You will then experience the whole tragi-comedy of
those who want to halt an unstoppable event and make time stand
still. They are pouring water into the bottomless cask of the
Danaldes. Because dust stands for something else that one wants
to clean, dusting will become a compulsion for as long as the prob­
lem - which has been proj ected onto the dust - remains unsolved.
The absolute dust-free atmosphere being striven for here signi­
fies something else that one wants to keep pure; for instance, a
moralistic purity which one sees endangered by temptation. Shift­
ing the actual problem onto something banal makes it compul­
sive in the first place; truly engaging with our problem does not
become a compulsion. Whenever we have the irrational feeling
of "must do" in activities that are in themselves insignificant, we
should ask ourselves which more important issues or decisions
are we attempting to avoid in this way.
In his novel "Auch Einer" (Another One) Friedrich Theodor
Vischer described this problematic nature of compulsion with hu­
mour. The hero of the story is at constant war with the "perfidy
of inanimate obj ects", as he calls it. He is constantly making mis­
takes and slips that arise from suppressed emotions and impuls­
es, particularly aggressive ones that he then lays at the door of
the obj ect itself in its perfidy. When he "accidentally" pours gravy
over the dress of a lady he is seated next to at the table and whom
he dislikes, this is just the "perfidy of objects", in this case the
gravy boat and the button of his suit that caught the handle, and
is not the expression of his suppressed aversion and aggression
towards the lady. It is with compulsive people that we encounter
most frequently those slips described by Freud because these
persons suppress such a large number of living impulses. In
Freudian slips - slips of the tongue, forgetting, " accidentally"
j ostling someone etc., what has been suppressed is asserting itself
subconsciously - therefore without guilt and conscious will.
They just "happen" to these people, slipping out of the grasp of
their normal control and betraying what they are attempting to
conceal.

III

Fea r o f c h a n ge : 1 19
III
 As they develop, the compulsions of a truly obsessive-com­
pulsive person can take on frightening and macabre features by
increasingly taking over that person's life and leading a life of their
own with downright demonical power. One can understand how
in earlier times, when the psychological implications were not yet
known, these eerie compulsions, carried out even when obvious­
ly senseless, were seen as possession by the devil or demons. The
obsessive-compulsive persons themselves often experience the be­
ing forced to carry out their compulsive acts as if subj ect to a strange
power because these acts are ego-dystonic, alien to their ego.
Inherent in every compulsion is the tendency - to borrow a com­
parison from somatic pathogenesis - to create metastases; that is,
for the compulsion to proliferate and to spread to as-yet-untouched
areas. This can result in life being increasingly constricted and filled
with compulsions, as we will see in some later examples.
The processes described here can also take place only endo­
psychically such as in defence against unsettling " evil" thoughts,
desires and impulses that one believes must be suppressed. Then,
a large part of one's time and energy goes to fighting against them.
For instance, one will use counterspells in a manner of speaking;
if one wants to defend oneself against evil, sinful, dirty thoughts
or desires, then each time they threaten to arise one must imme­
diately undertake countermeasures - perhaps a magic formula
("Jesus - Mary - ]oseph") - or must do something else to thrust
from one's consciousness what is to be avoided. In a severe form
this can lead to self-punishment which we see particularly in the
realm of religious fanaticism - just think of the flagellants. The
"metastases", the spreading excrescences of such compulsions,
can extend to ever more areas that must now be avoided: even
harmless words and concepts that are phonetically or otherwise
associatively connected with the ones to be avoided are suspect
and must be avoided also. This is caricaturized in the j oke of the
" Christian multiplication table" where one has to count " one -
two - three - four - five - fie ! - seven" because six (pronounced
in German like " sex") is reminiscent of proscribed sexuality and
must therefore be left out. Here one is also in the situation of
those who want to keep the room absolutely dust-free. One is
reminded of the Latin proverb, "N aturam expellas furca, tamen

1 20 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n a l i t ies
•
usque recurret" - You may drive out nature (life) with a pitch­
fork, yet she'll be constantly running back. This can take on such
convoluted forms as in the following example where under the
conscious aspect of defence, what was being defended against is
surreptitiously reintroduced.

An obsessional-ne urotic patient had a washing compulsion which

was based on her subconscious and symbolic "dirty " sexual impulses,
that is, to self-gratification, wh ich she had been taught to regard as
a sin . She had to wash her genital region - as the actual "sinful " part
- particularly intensively and so often that she rein troduced the for­
bidden feelings of lust leading to orgasm and satisfaction "surrepti­
tiously " - but now "inadvertently " and therefore without g u ilt as con ­
sciously she only wanted to keep herself pure.

The Christian church of all confessions has been guilty of quite

a few ecclesiogenic neuroses due to its damning of sexuality and
the feelings of guilt arising from this - regrettably even still to­
day. Their hostility towards the body plunged countless young
people, particularly during puberty, into avoidable anxieties and
feelings of guilt, instead of, as is the case in so-called primitive
cultures in their rites of initiation, guiding the young people
through this so important phase of development: for instance, by
using school instruction or in group evenings and thematically
lead group talks where they can ask questions. For a long time
there were only confirmation lessons which consisted mainly of
learning by heart the catechism and hymns and avoiding at all
costs the " embarrassing" questions. Fortunately, much has
changed in this regard and youth has taken for itself much of what
was withheld from it. Anyone who has been working in psy­
chotherapy for several decades knows what terrible consequences
religion-based hostility to the body had; this hostility usually
commenced with the battle against onanism. This was supposed
to result in terrifying physical and mental damage therefore caus­
ing extremely severe feelings of anxiety and guilt which not in­
frequently ended in the suicide of adolescents when they realized
they could not win the unavailing struggle against this " sin" .

Fea r o f c h a n ge : 1 21
•
 The co m p u lsive person and love

ove, this irrational, crossing-aIl-borders, transcendental

Lemotional experience which can intensify to a dangerous
passion is in itself very alarming to people like this. Here is ob­
viously something that one cannot " do", that appears to have its
own laws, eludes their will and can attack them like a disease and,
possibly, can even make them act irrationally. All this is quite in­
compatible with the safeguarding tendencies and will-to-power
of the compulsive personality.
People with a compulsive personality structure, therefore, at­
tempt to keep their feelings "in hand", to stay in control of them.
They have no reliance on feelings, which are too subj ective, too
capricious and transient. Passion is to them even more suspect; it
is completely unpredictable, irrational and, moreover, a sign of
weakness. These persons are thus more parsimonious in their use
of emotion, have difficulty giving into their feelings and also have
little understanding for those of the partner. With their busi­
nesslike attitude at the wrong moment they can have an extremely
sobering effect in emotional encounters.
However, in all partnership relations they have a feeling of re­
sponsibility and stand firmly by their decisions once they have
made them. It is not easy for them to recognize the partner as
having equal rights; they tend more towards a vertical order: Up
or down, being the hammer or the anvil appears to them to be
the inescapable " either/or" - and who would ever want to be the
anvil ? Thus in their case a relationship can easily become a pow­
er game for supremacy. If the depressive wants to make the part­
ner dependent on them from a fear of loss, the compulsive does
it from a need for power: he or she wants to mould the partner
according to their will. This is why it is difficult for them to al­
low the other to be different; they tend to see the partner as their
property, as a possession subordinate to their will. Thus it is not
infrequent in partnerships that the compulsive person lives at the
expense of the partner from whom he or she demands too much
accommodation and acquiescence. On the other hand, for them
a relationship has something fateful about it and they demon-

1 22 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve per s o n
•
strate a great capacity for dependability and resilience. Fidelity
is close to their hearts for economic reasons alone. Marriages are
often entered into for rational reasons with material aspects and
other securities playing a not insignificant role. B efore they en­
ter into a binding relationship they can be prey to long-lasting
doubts; this results in overlong engagements and repeated post­
ponements of the wedding date. Once they have made up their
minds they see the tie as insoluble either from religious or ethic­
al reasons or merely because they do not want to capitulate, even
if they or the partner are suffering or if the partner wants to dis­
solve the relationship.
A woman asked her h usband why he would not agree to the divorce
she had wan tedfor a long time, especially as their marriage, evenfrom
his point of view, had become intolerable. His answer was, "Because we
are married " as if this meant something imm utable had been created.

He did not say this for religious or other understandable reasons

but only because he happened to have married. Habit played a
significant role as well as his need to exert power, and it also ap­
peared better to him to cling to what existed than to risk begin­
ning something new. This attitude can result in marriages where
the whole "marriage bond" consists of smouldering hate and mu­
tual tormenting, leading to each partner merely waiting for the
other to die.
The stronger the compulsive traits are developed, the more a
marriage will be seen as a legal contract with strictly stipulated
rights and duties. The formal aspect is imbued with a supervalent
importance that can always be invoked. As long as this remains
in a sensible framework of "clara pacta - boni amici" (clear agree­
ments, good friends), there is nothing wrong with this. Howev­
er, when the formal relationship supplants the emotional one, there
can emerge an insistence on one's supposed rights and principles
even leading to sadism, where under the cover of correctitude
hostile feelings and claims to power are played out.
During a crisis in her marriage, a woman went to a la wyer and had
him set up a con tract in which thefrequency ofsexual in tercourse and
the room temperature desired by her were stipulated. The contract also

. . . a n d l ove : 1 23
•
 con tained clauses prohibiting her h usband from smoking in the bed­
room, with specific amounts of monetary fines in the case of in -
fringements or non -compliance with these rules. ljthe h usband signed
the contract she was willing to remain married to h im . She was seri­
ously of the opinion that th is was a business -like and fair suggestion
of hers wh ich would enable the contin uation of the marriage.

Here, regulation-like conditions were laid down instead of at­

tacking the problem where it lay: in emotional non-understand­
ing and in wanting to enforce her wishes.
In crises and arguments, the compulsive person shows little
insight; it is difficult for them to concede a point, even in cases
where they should recognize the injustice of their attitude. They
adhere to the past and will pedantically write down for the part­
ner, with exact times and other proofs, what they did wrong in
the past and now have done once again and how frequently this
or that mistake has been made. In crises they often have peculiar
ideas of what would be of assistance - as can be seen in the ex­
ample above. As they do not think much of feelings, they offer
the partner what appears to them to be reasonable suggestions
and attempt to set up rules that both partners should follow. If,
for instance, a wife complains that on Sundays her husband
spends all his time with his stamp collection or tinkering and she
is bored, he will make a suggestion for a compromise. He will
only occupy himself with his hobbies on every second Sunday
and will go out with his wife on the other ones. This programme
will then be kept to the letter - here one can see his attempt to be
caring and to make an effort. However, this is all a bit stilted and
he has got hold of the wrong end of the stick as he is undertak­
ing a self-imposed duty and, therefore, feels he has done his part.
He is then very surprised and annoyed when his wife is still not
happy because she can sense his disinclination. She really want­
ed more loving attention from him and not a day out arranged
from a sense of duty.
This example can stand for many similar patterns of behav­
iour with which compulsive persons attempt to solve problems
with their partner. The partner never gets what they actually want:
more pleasure, more spontaneity and tangible affection, more

1 24 : The c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
variety and cheerfulness in everyday life. In the face of such " de­
mands" - and the compulsive person must perceive them as such
from the viewpoint of his or her austerity and restraint - they
feel the other is insatiable. Thus both live alongside each other
with no understanding and contact and the problems continue to
escalate.
In partnerships a special role is played by time and money,
punctuality and frugality; this is where the power drive, pedantry
and rigidity come most conspicuously to the fore. Dinner must
be on the table exactly " on the stroke" of the hour; the house­
keeping money is doled out with demands for receipts " down to
the last penny" or the husband must hand over all his wages at
home and is then allotted pocket-money and so on. Necessary
acquisitions turn into dramas; their necessity is discussed end­
lessly or they are held up as a sign of the extravagance of the part­
ner or of how negligent they are with things so that a new pur­
chase - i s necessary " again" . Money problems in such marriages
are the most frequent crisis trigger.
In the patriarchy with its male privileges, marriages were of­
ten at the expense of the woman. Even just the "marital rights "
to which the woman's sexuality was degraded, which had the ef­
fect of debasing her self, is an example of this. In the next chap­
ter on hysteria we will see how woman revenged herself for this.
In patriarchy, the usual marriages were those in which the man
held everything in his hands and in which the woman was more
or less deprived of rights, at the very least seen and treated as an
immature child and kept in total dependency.
In the case of severe compulsive traits, these people find it of
the greatest importance that the partner "functions ", punctually,
exactly, reliably and as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, with­
out ever honouring the partner's own wishes, never mind emo­
tional needs. Instead of a living exchange, instead of a mutual give
and take, there are only conditions and rules as to how the part­
ner should behave. One can imagine how cold and programmed
such a marriage must be. Frequently the sexual side of the mar­
riage is also governed by a rigid schedule. It becomes a compul­
sory exercise and is not enjoyed according to inclination and mood
- one sleeps together when and because it is " on the schedule" .

..

. . . a n d l ove : 1 25
III
 The attitude towards sexuality, as towards all the j oys of life
and possibilities of pleasure, becomes ever more problematic the
more the compulsive traits increase. We have already indicated
that sexuality is often "planned". This lends the whole love life
something Eros-hostile and mood sobering, something com­
pletely un-Dionysian. This can even lead to the first encounter
with the opposite sex being a failure - think of the frequent di­
sasters on the wedding night. The lack of empathy with the part­
ner, the lack of erotic fantasy, means that the love life remains in
the rut it first made. Not infrequently, the sexuality of a com­
pulsive has a sadistic impact, in wanting to force the partner, in
the merging of an intimate relationship with the will-to-power.
Also retaining feelings of shame and guilt learned at an early
age in connection with sexuality can turn an intimate relation­
ship into something tormented, unjoyous and unimaginative that
is only allowed within a rigid framework and under certain con­
ditions. This can go so far that long periods of doubt or an " aver­
sion barrier" are erected as a shield in front of the "forbidden"
urges or other scruples and rationalizations occur.
The compulsive man often carries over into his sexuality his
will to perform; the sexual relationship becomes a testing ground
for his functional capacity, his potency, and the partner therefore
becomes the 0 bj ect of his performance test. The German language
(in which this book was originally written) has the same word
for sexual and financial potency and with these persons one of­
ten finds the same attitude to their sexual potency as they have
to money. Either they want to demonstrate that they have enough
"fortune", or they are miserly with their potency from the fear
that there is only a certain amount available to them and they
must therefore hoard it, must not " shoot their bolt" - this is the
same way they deal with their money.
The erotic and sexual love relationship is prone to disorders
in their case and often dependent on certain conditions that must
be fulfilled. Sounds, smells, lighting, doors that are not properly
closed and other external circumstances can disturb them so
much that they are no longer in the mood or are not potent at all.
Some of them need long washing preparations beforehand, there­
by robbing in advance the intimate rendezvous of all excitement;

1 26 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
or they avoid it by having to deal with " duties" that must be car­
ried out first - something needs tidying, needs finishing. Tired­
ness is also a favourite excuse or pressure of work - there are of
course myriad possibilities for evading a living partnership and
its corollary loving attention. They just have difficulty finding
uninhibited j oy in their senses. If they cannot free themselves from
regarding their partner as their possession, they tend towards jeal­
ousy which in this case is more of a power problem: They do not
want the partner to elude their grip. If the partner attempts to do
so, the compulsive will constrict them even more, endeavouring
to ensure their " ownership ", which only exacerbates the situa­
tion. It was probably a compulsive in former times who invent­
ed the chastity belt.
Frequently, with compulsives, one finds a sharp distinction
between love and sexuality, between tenderness and sensuality.
This means that they cannot desire those they love and on the
other hand can only desire those they do not love because they
do not associate sex, which appears to them to be dirty, with the
woman they love - that would degrade her. Thus one often finds
men who adore a woman but live out their sexuality with pros­
tItutes.
The healthy persons in this category who only exhibit slight
compulsive traits are generally not passionate lovers but on the
other hand are reliable and stable in their affection. They can of­
fer their partners consistent affection and a feeling of security, of
being sheltered and in good hands and the assurance that they
will always stand by them responsibly. As marriage partners they
are good providers and their family often gives an impression of
a "wholesome" companionship in a very positive sense, which is
constructed securely on mutual respect, affection and responsi­
bility.

..

. . . a n d l ove : 1 27
•
 The co m p u lsive person and ag gression

he compulsive person also has difficulties with his aggres­

T sions and affects. He or she had to learn at too early an age
to control and to govern themselves; spontaneous reactions - as
we will see in the biographical background - are anxiety-cathect­
ed. Expressions of anger, hate, defiance and hostility and so on
had to be suppressed from childhood or they resulted in pun­
ishment or deprivation of love. However, in life they are un­
avoidable - what to do with them, then? As the ego is more strong­
ly developed than is the case with depressives, they did not as
children have the same fear of loss which would make them deny
their emotions, but they had to forbid aggression for fear of pun­
ishment. Let us look at the possibilities remaining for them in
such a situation.
The most frequent one would be that they are very careful
how they deal with their affects and aggressions; they will hesi­
tate and be uncertain whether they may be aggressive in such and
such a situation and if they are, often have the tendency to mod­
ify what was expressed, to water it down, to extenuate or to re­
tract as in this example: Once, in a therapy session when a patient
made an aggressive comment about his wife, expressing a justi­
fied annoyance, he immediately weakened it: "That was natural­
ly exaggerated, I didn't really mean it that way, was just an ex­
ample; please don't misunderstand me, you might get the wrong
impression - usually we get along fine. " Here one can clearly see
with what alarm and resulting feelings of guilt an expression of
aggression is experienced; this tendency to retract can magnify
into atonement or self-punishment.
Compulsive persons can also create ideologies as an attempt
to solve the conflict of experiencing affects but not being allowed
to express them. In their case, the renunciation of affects is usu­
ally accomplished via the ideologizing of self-restraint and self­
denial: expressing affects is thus a sign of letting-oneself-go, of
not having oneself in hand, behaviour that is below their digni­
ty. As healthy as this might be, within certain limits, there still re­
mains the danger that they are overtaxing themselves: the affects

1 28 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
are throttled too strongly and are being dammed up inside and
ever more control is needed so they do not break out. From this,
obsessive-compulsive symptoms can develop, such as with the
woman who never expressed the hostility she felt for her hus­
band but developed instead a fear of knives and sharp obj ects.
She had to clear them away immediately when she saw them; if
she looked at them too long, they could have triggered the sup­
pr�ssed aggression and then who knows what she would have
been capable of? If she had discussed her feelings with her hus­
band, her aggressions would not have taken on the threatening
intensity engendered by damming them up.
A further possibility for compulsive persons in this dilemma
is to find legitimate opportunities for expressing the impulse.
There are events and occasions that do not just allow expressions
of aggression but actually make them appear of value. This is pos­
sible in some professions where they fight everything that they
have to forbid themselves, everywhere they find it. This can re­
sult in creating fanatics who fight relentlessly, implacably and
without consideration against something or other - be it in the
hygienic, instinctive, moralistic or religious fields. They no longer
direct their aggression against themselves as do the depressives,
but, with a clear conscience because they are persuaded they are
doing something worthwhile, against something or someone out­
side. One can imagine how dangerous this can become; when one
is looking for a vent for one's aggressions, one will always find
something that one can fight against "with conviction". This al­
lows them to express the most colossal aggression which is now
sanctified by the intent. We have already mentioned this phe­
nomenon with regard to Christian ideologies.
Here also, the border between the healthy and the patho­
logical is very fine as aggressions combine with norms that in
themselves have value or that at least are indicative of one. How
catastrophic the effects can be if, for instance, one can bring an
entire collective to put its aggressions at the service of an ideo­
logy can be seen in the persecution of the Jews during the Third
Reich and can be seen in all wars where the destruction of the
enemy is raised to a virtue and maybe even sanctioned by the
church.

. . . a n d a gg res s i o n : 1 29
•
 A milder variant of the described "legitimate" aggressions is
exaggerated correctness which, along with the suppression of ag­
gression, is probably the most frequent form of obsessive-com­
pulsive expression of aggression - with the rider that the com­
pulsive person does not generally recognize the aggression as such.
The opportunities of expressing one's affects through such cor­
rectness, which can reach almost sadistic patterns of behaviour,
are extremely numerous: the clerk who closes the counter punc­
tually on the dot although there would have been time enough
to help one more person; the teacher who chalks up the tiniest
punctuation or inattention mistake; the examiner who only ac­
cepts as correct the exact answer that he is looking for; or the
judge adhering rigidly to the letter of the law without taking the
motive into account and for whom a deed is a deed. One could
find many more examples of equivalent aggressions. In such ap­
parently legitimate ways through over-correctness, these people
live out their aggressions, abuse their power and disguise their
behaviour from themselves by believing they are only being con­
sistent, doing what is right, representing a value. It is just this,
though, that makes the aggression of compulsives dangerous.
They plead values which makes it difficult to recognize what
is appropriate for the issue and what is self-interest. Naturally,
things must have an " order" - but a living one, not a pedantic
orderliness; ethical principles have value, but a life-hostile moral­
ity does not.
From this premise, a direct line leads towards everything that
we can label obedience training, as drill, as we know it from the
military. For the aggression of compulsives it is, as we have seen,
generally characteristic that they like to adhere to norms, rules
and principles; this happens preferably " in the name of. . . " and is
usually closely linked to the instinct for power. This makes it dif­
ficult to prove their aggression to them, and it also lends it some­
thing superpersonal, anonymous, behind which the personal lust
for aggression conceals itself.
A further characteristic of compulsive aggression is its con­
nection to the will to power; it is not only for defence, self-pro­
tection and coping with the aggression as with the schizoids, here
the issue is power. The aggression of compulsives serves power

1 30 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
and the power in its turn serves the aggression. This is why we
find compulsive people in professions that confer power and at
the same time offer the opportunity to live out aggression legal­
ly, in the name of order, discipline, the law, and authority. It should
not surprise us that many politicians correspond to this structure
type to a greater or lesser degree, also the military, police, civil
servants, judges, priests, pedagogues and prosecuting attorneys.
It is dependent on the maturity and integrity of the respective
personalities how they deal with power and aggression. As in
every society, ours, with its orders and hierarchies, offers com­
pulsive personalities rich opportunities to live out their aggres­
sion and their hate legitimately under the guise of good princi­
pIes. Parents, school and church are the first educative milieus or
institutions, that by means of drill, obedience training, and love­
less methods of education, by awakening feelings of guilt and
through punishments, prepare fertile ground for a later compul­
sive personality development in children - we will understand
this better in the next chapter.
Another form of obsessive-compulsive aggression is devi­
ousness, that is, the deceitful cowardly, hidden aggression which
lies in wait to attack from ambush. We find this in people who
were severely punished in childhood for expressing their aggres­
sion; they were not allowed to openly articulate feelings of defi­
ance' negative emotions etc. They only did so secretly and on the
sly - they were forced into hiding, as it were, if they dared. The
borderline to perfidy, to maliciousness, to the "wolf in sheep's
clothing" is then a very fine one.
A further consequence of all too severe punishments, particu­
larly of the child's motoric-expansive and affective-aggressive
patterns of behaviour, is that the child cannot develop a healthy
somaesthesia, that is, a feeling for its own body. It does not learn
to handle its body properly, does not "feel at home" in it. In or­
der to feel j oy in one's body one must be able to use it freely, to
have a freedom of movement which one experiences as pleasur­
able. If, on the other hand, one always has to be careful not to
put people's backs up then one will not only develop a motoric­
aggressive inhibition but also a broader uncertainty in movement
that we call clumsiness in its more marked form and which can

. . . a n d a gg res s i o n : 131
•
 become blundering in more severe cases. In cases like this, ag­
gression can only be asserted in the above-mentioned mistakes.
The aggressions of the awkward, clumsy, blundering person then
"happen", "inadvertently" apparently without intent. Thus they
live out their suppressed aggressions and affects in the form of
dropping the valuable vase "by mistake" that was to be filled with
water, of stumbling and toppling over the standing lamp and so
on. One can be annoyed at them, but cannot really make them
responsible for what they have done; thus they enjoy a certain
fool's privilege and one might even have a slight benevolent-pity­
ing feeling of superiority - which is how finely tuned his or her
revengeful attitude towards the people around them are, the peo­
ple who were originally the cause of their being " all thumbs ".
Not infrequently there is a further fringe benefit: one doesn't let
them do anything because they will do it wrong anyway and in
this way they evade many annoying chores.
Let us just mention in passing that having to pull oneself to­
gether all the time in conjunction with the supervalent self-con­
trol can give the impulse for a hypochondriac self-monitoring;
this can also be employed as an aggression equivalent by tor­
menting one's surroundings with one's hypochondriac anxieties
and symptoms and in this way destroying all cheerful moods.
Then, perhaps, the real or imagined faulty workings of the bow­
els can result in a family upheaval or something similar.
We can describe other aggression equivalents in the case of
compulsive persons in which their suppressed aggressions and
affects assert themselves, although once again they are not con­
sciously experienced and are therefore without feelings of guilt:
Dawdling, the circuitousness and indecisiveness with which they
can cause considerable torment and annoyance to the people
around them, is a very fine and concealed form of aggression.
Here we can class the women who when getting ready to go to
the concert or the theatre are never ready on time thus bringing
their partner to a white heat; or the men who start at the year
dot, so to speak, to explain the most trivial incident as in the fol­
lowing example from a compulsive patient who wanted to ex­
plain to me why he was " almost two minutes" ( ! ) late for his ap­
pOIntment:

1 32 : The c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
 "I left my office os usual p unctually at 6. 7 5pm; I walked at my usual
pace to the bus stop; the bus come almost three m in utes late but
caught up roughly one m in ute. With th is delay I arrived at the bus stop
that I m ust get off at in order to reach you; I wonted to make up 0 bit
for this by walkingfaster but was stopped by 0 woman who asked me
the way to 0 certain street, and whom I of course hod to answer - it
wasn 't very easy to describe the way to her - and I hod to run fast the
final yards to your office. "

He could have compressed this - if the two minutes had even

been worth mentioning - into the sentence, " Sorry I was late to­
day". He was also one of the patients who press the bell exactly
on the minute - they demonstrate herewith a neutrality that is
unassailable: they come neither too early, which one could con­
strue as being importunate or as a sign that they like to come and
just cannot wait; nor too late, which could be interpreted as be­
ing impolite or with malicious intent. A variant of this is the hold­
ing back, the not-giving-anything-away unless founded on sensi­
ble consideration. Compulsive persons also use this method as a
vent for aggression, more or less indirect aggression. The hus­
band who waits to be asked for even the smallest sum; the defi­
ant or deathly silence which leaves the other out in the cold are
examples of this. One is not openly aggressive so that one can­
not be accused of anything but one can still considerably offend
and hurt the other. Generally one could say the compulsive tends
more to the sins of omission than the sins of commission - sins
of omission are, of course, more difficult to prove.
The contrast to this would be the intrusiveness, the lack of dis­
tance which can be expressed in colloquial terms as "verbal diar­
rhoea", the ceaseless talking which overwhelms the other, speak­
ing "without pause for breath". And finally we should mention
nagging which is a typical form of aggression for compulsives.
If the fear of punishment and moral anxiety, as well as feel­
ings of guilt in connection with their aggressive impulses become
too strong for the compulsive person, so that the above-mentioned
possibilities and aggression equivalents are not at his or her dis­
posal, the result is somatization. Coronary and circulatory prob­
lems, fluctuations in blood pressure (particularly hypertonus, not

... a n d a gg res s i o n : 1 33
•
 infrequently the precursor to apoplectic seizures), headaches and
migraines, sleep disorders and intestinal affects (colics etc.) can
be the result, and respectively the expression in body language of
affects and aggressions that have been suppressed for too long.
In these symptoms, an insoluble conflict between wanting to be
aggressive and not being allowed to, between wanting to mas­
terfully coerce and a not-venturing yielding to others having their
way is taking place. However, the damming up of the affects and
the corresponding inner pressure can result in outbreaks of what
is suppressed culminating in running amok, violent fits of tem­
per or an indiscriminate volition to destroy. In his novel "The
Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge", Rilke fascinatingly de­
scribes such a motoric outbreaking. An example for the soma­
tizing of affects and aggressions:

A very correct and self-con trolled man in an important and responsi­

ble post had so objectified and neutralized h is interpersonal relation ­
ships that they con tained almost n o emotional con tent whatsoever,
particularly nothing affective. He had brought himself to the state of
never demonstrating grief nor happiness, anger nor impatience -
nothing could upset h im or irritate h im in th is stoicism. He was e ven
proud of having h imself so well in hand, being so emotionally im ­
pregnable and always s uperior to the situation. But he had one vul­
nerable spot: in situations in which he would have liked to have re ­
acted with anger or fierceness but which he could not allow h imself
for reasons of prestige and beca use of his inner-image, he frequen tly
had a quite perceptible racing pulse and pains in h is heart - his ar­
mour was obviously not as impenetrable as he thought. When these
symptoms worsened during a crisis in h is career, where he had to put
up with many attacks and rivalries, the doctor he consulted diagnosed
an imminent heart attack unless he relaxed more and unburdened him ­
self As is so often the case, it was not the professional burden wh ich
was the crucial issue but h is extrem e and unnatural self-control and
(fs tiff upper lip " which left h im no ventfor h is affects.

Of Bismarck we know that due to his damming up of affects he

tended towards weeping spasms and biting into carpets. A tragedy
often lies in the fact that people with strong affects often hold

•
•
1 34 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
posts where they believe they cannot allow any affects, because
of their image or because of a self-imposed role model.
I would like to mention one more aggression defence which
is particularly characteristic of the compulsive personality: he or
she can protect themselves from their aggressions by idealizing
and therefore making unassailable the person who is responsible
for them - after childhood we find this mainly in pupil-master
relationships. Ultimately though, this means one remains a type
of son or daughter; this is also true in the religious area.

The biographical b ack gro u nd

e would now like to ask ourselves again what constitu­

W tional factors and which environmental influences can
promote the development of compulsive personality structures.
Constitutionally, a particularly lively motoric-aggressive, sexual
and generally expansive disposition appears to play a role; there
can also be a predispositional emphasis on being headstrong and
independent. Predispositions, therefore, with which a child is, on
average, more likely to annoy or to be experienced as uncom­
fortable by the parents and therefore more often restricted and
curbed, in comparison to a quieter and " good" child. But also a
gentle and adaptable disposition with a tendency to compliance
and docility can play a role as the child allows itself too few spon­
taneous reactions and adapts itself more than is good for it. Fur­
ther, a congenital tendency to contemplation, to a brooding need
for perfection and a strongly emotional adherence to the past,
where all impressions are imprinted more deeply and last longer,
must be considered. We must leave open to speculation, and with­
out being able to make a decision, whether or not and to what
degree such characteristics are to be laid at the disposition of an
individual's door or whether they are, after all, reactions to envir­
onmental influences and education; that is, how far are such
patterns of behaviour more result than cause. This question will
never be answered satisfactorily - one would have to have one
and the same child grow up in different milieus. We can say for

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 35
•
 certain that disposition is a factor which we tend to neglect too
easily in favour of research into environmental factors; in the same
way one used to underestimate environmental factors when the
attention was aimed primarily at genetic factors. What do the en­
vironmental factors look like then? There is a situation where the
need for safeguarding and permanence on the one hand and fear
of transience and change on the other become supervalent.
In order to understand this, we must take a closer look at the
developmental phase following on from that of the two earlier
ones. This is the period from two to four years of age when the
child is first confronted by the imperatives and prohibitions of
its environment. This is when it falls from the grace of the "in­
nocent" earliest years where nothing was expected or demanded
of it, where nothing was forbidden, all its needs were satisfied
without its having to do anything itself. Now, for the first time,
the child is in the situation of being in conflict with its sur­
roundings, in a conflict between its own wishes and impulses, its
will, and the will and demands of its educators. It has now reached
an age in which something can be demanded of it. However, it
already has so much ego, so much self-being, so much motor drive
and faculty of expression that it wants to approach the world and
interact with it; during the earlier phases everything was brought
to it. It can now express its wishes and affects with more skill as
well as verbally; it conquers space and tests its strengths and strives
to assert its will over resistances.
Following the phase of complete dependency on the mother,
it now experiences a detaching phase with a growing tendency
towards independence - this is the phase when it says " I " for the
first time, as an expression of the recognized, experienced dis­
tinction from its mother, from the symbiosis with her in which
it did not experience the I and the Thou as different. With the ac­
quired growing ability to manage its body, its motoricity, ag­
gressivity, expansiveness and self-will are directed increasingly
towards its surroundings. It learns, from the conflict with it, of
the resistance of "matter" as well as the reactions of its environ­
ment to its behaviour. Here, it experiences its skill, its power, and
their limits. Here, among other things, but essential for this phase
of development, the child acquires the orientation toward what

1 36 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
is allowed and what is not, the early forms of the categories of
good and bad. Each child must find its own individual solution
between its self-will and having-to-obey, between asserting itself
and adapting itself. The result of this approach to a solution is
dependent on its disposition and the environment this meets with.
The first important opportunity for experiencing its self-will
or having-to-obey, and one which engraves lasting behavioural
patterns, is offered by toilet training. Here, the foundations can
be laid either for the child's healthy self-determination, or for an
attitude of defiance or for a yielding docility, depending on how
the child is treated during toilet training: whether one allows it
time to gradually take the step on its own or constellates its de­
fiance with forced obedience training, or ultimately breaks its self­
will at an early stage with coercion and punishment. With the
child's growing acquisition of skills and through its need to in­
teract with the world, the need to do something with the things
it encounters, there are a growing number of situations in which
it can collide with the world, can be a nuisance and experience it­
self through the reactions of its surroundings as " bad" or
"naughty" . During this age of between roughly two and four, the
first steps towards the destiny of its expansive-motoric and ag­
gressive drives as well as the forming of its self-will are deter­
mined; the processing patterns learned here will become the be­
havioural models for its personality development.
It is now of decisive importance when and in what way the
first imperatives and prohibitions are presented to the child. The
first "fall from grace" does not become possible until the experi­
encing of the first stirrings of being-good-or-bad. Now for the
first time it hears "you should", or "you may not", or "you may
not yet", and the child experiences itself as good when it obeys
and bad when defying. If it is confronted with these challenges
too early or too late; if one treats it too rigidly and too based on
principle or in too lax a manner and too inconsistently; if defi­
ance and disobedience are broken when they first awaken or are
led with loving guidance towards voluntary deeds - then these
can all form the basis for those early imprints. Fundamentally,
these early imprints mould the way the child deals with its self­
will and spontaneity in the broadest sense of these impulses. Thus,

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 37
•
 the deepest substructure is laid for whether a person will have
healthy self-confidence, healthy self-will and the courage of his
or her convictions or if he or she will defiantly rebel against au­
thorities or will adapt to them compliantly thereby acquiring the
beginnings of a later compulsive personality structure.
Through the experiences of the first clashes of its will with the
should and the must, the may and the may not, the course is set
for the child to experience the freedom or the shackling of its im­
pulses of volition; the severity or mildness of its moral conscience,
its "super-ego " - as psychoanalysis calls this entity, the environ­
mentally conditioned part of the integral conscience acquired in
childhood - as well as for the degree of its uninhibited spontaneity
or on the other hand, its inhibition due to supervalent self-con­
trol. The child also internalizes the reactions of the environment
to its behaviour, but now as a judge who represents what were
originally the externally imposed imperatives and prohibitions;
the child thus continues to assimilate what has been learned and
" engrave d" .
In the biographical background of those who later become
compulsive personalities, we regularly find that, in their child­
hood age-inappropriately much too early and too rigidly, the liv­
ing, aggressive, affective impulses that desire to shape and change
as well as any spontaneity, any expression of healthy self-will have
been curbed, inhibited, punished or suppressed. And this in the
phase of development in which the unfolding of this age-appro­
priate learning of skills and behaviour is due and necessary and
which should lead to greater self-reliance and independence. As
we can see everywhere in the realm of the living - just think of
the results of behavioural research - first impressions and experi­
ences have a most particular imprinting effect when they refer­
ence new things to be learned at the appropriate stages of devel­
opment. It is especially then, at the very beginning, that they eas­
ily attain a fateful significance and imprint categorical patterns of
behaviour in the area of what is to be newly learned.
It begins, for instance, where everything in the surroundings
of the child may only ever happen or be carried out in a certain
manner, and deviations from this norm are experienced by the
child as dangerous because it has behaved badly. The reactions of

1 38 : T h e c o m p u l s ive pers o n
•
its environment to its " mis behaviour", censure, warnings, threats,
punishments and withdrawal of love, are henceforth associated
and connected within the child with its impulses which are ob­
viously seen as undesirable by the world. It will, for example, ex­
perience the mother looking reproachfully or rebukingly at it or
meting out punishment when it is loud, topples something over
or breaks something. From such repeated experiences the child
will at least become a little more careful, hesitant, controlled, per­
haps even a little uncertain and inhibited; in very anxiety-filled
cases it will gradually, when an impulse in a dangerous direction
arises, develop a reflex that immediately applies the brakes or sup­
presses It.
Here one can better understand the connection mentioned
above between the environment and a constitutional disposition
in the development of compulsive personality structures: lively,
impulsive, motoric-vital, aggressive-expansive children will nat­
urally be more frequently scolded, restrained, and more strictly
kept in check than quiet children; if there is more than scolding,
if punishments or threats of withdrawal of love are employed,
the results will be correspondingly more serious.
Age-inappropriate demands can be that the child must be toi­
let trained too early, should sit at the table and eat "properly",
should not break anything and may not express - even justified
- affects. One of the most grotesque examples of this:

In one fam ily, the children had to press a coin in each armpit when
eating so they did not toke up too m uch room when eating and to lea rn
{(g ood manners " - the coins were not allowed to fall out.

A well-functioning and well-trained child is, of course, more com­

fortable for the parents and can be paraded to the surrounding
environment as a model child proving the educational methods
of the parents to be superior and for which they need not be
ashamed. If one now- takes into account the conditions in large
cities, which unfortunately have almost become the norm and
apartments, which can become prisons for children if they do not
have an adequate chance to run around, the child literally no longer
knows what to do with its vital needs. If it has had to learn too

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 39
•
 early to keep an eye on itself, to "pull itself together" then this
will not only increasingly be at the expense of its natural unin­
hibitedness and spontaneity but also the fear of punishment and
its propensity for feelings of guilt will become supervalent.
The birth of siblings during these years tends to be difficult
to cope with because the Cain-Abel problem is most strongly
constellated at this age. The child has already developed its self­
will and its aggressivity and therefore consciously feels the next
child to be a rival. If the parents are not understanding of this and
do not help alleviate the situation for the child, a burdensome
situation can develop. Due to its hostile feelings for the sibling,
it must react with feelings of guilt which lead to an early compul­
sive safeguarding.

The only child of a mother who, beca use she suffered from m igrain es
was delicate and particularly easily annoyed, always had to take its
shoes off o utside the door when it came home from o utside or from
playing in the garden in order to make no mess or noise. If when it was
playing in the apartment and had the impulse to show the mother
something and would run into her room, disarraying the fringe on the
carpet by m istake, then this was the only thing that mattered. The child
was rebuked with a sigh, told it never took care; the mother wen t and
got a com b and com bed the carpetfringe again precisely and "accur­
ately" (a favourite word of hers) and what the child had wanted to
say was completely forgotten. Or the ch ild heard repeatedly, "Don 't
bother me now, you can see I have a headache; that I 'm reading; that
I 'm busy; that I haven 't got any time just now".

One can easily imagine what the effects of such experiences must
be over a long period of time.
But it can begin much earlier. This from the diary of a mother
writing about her first child (usually the firstborn is most strong­
ly subject to such measures because one wants to do everything
right and has read so much on the subj ect); the notes deal with
the first year in the life of the child.

"I began to potty-train you when you were three months old - I wan t­
edyou to be toilet-trained as soon as possible. You were a restless and

1 40 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
lively child; ifyou wouldn 't keep still when I was feeding you, I had to
give you a good smack un tilyou learned to keep still - later it was usu ­
ally enough when I looked threateningly at you foryou to be good. So
from an early age I made sure you didn 't defy me. As I had read in a
book,you are supposed to break defiance righ tfrom the start; so when
you cried when I left the room I gave you a really good smack then too;
this made you s(jream e ven louder to begin with but I leftyou alone till
you had screamed yourself out. It was quite obvious you only wan ted
to annoy me.After thatyou were a good ch ild; later there were no m ore
power strugg les and people were always so amazed thatyou were such
an obedient ch ild and could be governed withjust a look. Sometimes
I really had to force myself to be so strict - but I sa w it was doing you
good and thought you would understand later that I only wanted the
best for you and it was out of love that I was so strict. Father was in
the war and I was solely responsibleforyou. When he came back l wan t­
ed h im to fin d a properly brought-up child. JJ

This should be enough to show that a child like this has to learn
from a very early age to restrict its impulses immediately, to throt­
tle them in order not to be rejected or to annoy. With time this be­
comes " second nature", becomes reflexes which ultimately auto­
matize themselves. Later, one inserts a stop, a hiatus as it were, an
interruption between every-impulse and its execution because first
one has to ask oneself if one can risk giving in to the impulse or if
it might be better to forego it. This leads increasingly to the fact
that because of the interruption and the thinking, the impulse is so
weakened that it can no longer assert itself; or it remains bogged
down in doubt as to whether one may or may not. This doubt can
reach such a degree of intensity that it takes on a life of its own as
a compulsive having-to-doubt, arising with every impulse that has
a semblance of danger and more or less annulling it.
After this, we can understand that for compulsive personal­
ities doubt in all its possible variations plays a large role. It is a
protection against dangerous spontaneity, against a letting-one­
self-go which would be regretted. Thus the doubt can absolutize
itself more and more, becoming an end in itself and therefore a
substitute for real doing. All these doubts lead back through the
earlier experiencing to the primal doubt: May I be myself and do

III

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c kg ro u n d : 141
III
 what I want or must I obey and forego my impulses - must I be
" good" or may I be "bad"; or rather, is what I want to do good
or bad ? In compulsive persons, this doubt brings about the ten­
dency, characteristic of this type, to vacillate and hesitate, to be
indecisive and to postpone and to procrastinate. They find them­
selves in the position of Buridan's donkey that starved between
two bundles of hay because it couldn't decide which one to eat
first; only in the case of compulsives they cannot decide between
having the courage to do the deed and the fear of punishment. In
their case, the decision is made more difficult by the conflict be­
tween the original impulse and the conditioned fear of following
this impulse. Schematically we can say that the strength of their
compulsions is dependent upon the ratio between the instinctual
drive and the fear of punishment as it existed in their childhood.
This doubtful hesitating and faltering, the tormenting indeci­
sion becomes more comprehensible when one knows that for these
people decisions and resolutions once made have the character of
immutability, something irrevocable; they have to be "absolute­
ly" right, otherwise they will have to count on being punished.
This can make a problem out of unimportant decisions - they al­
ways have to find the right solution, otherwise anxiety sets in.
The more compulsive one is, the more room such obsessive
doubts usurp the place of sensible acts; they can escalate to a
doubting mania and become so reflexively entrenched that every
thought must be answered with a counterthought. When the suc­
cession of impulse and counterimpulse accelerates even more, it
finally reaches the stage of happening almost simultaneously: first
of all the pause, the hiatus between impulse and counterimpulse
is even longer; then it continually becomes shorter to a rapid suc­
cession of yes-no-yes-no which, when manifested physically, can
lead to tremors or stuttering depending on whether it refers to
the wanting-to-do-something-but-not-being-allowed or want­
ing-to-say-something-but-not-being-allowed. Finally, both an­
tithetical impulses occur at practically the same moment and
paralyse the compulsive p ersonality in total deadlock and cata­
tonic rigidity: if one simultaneously wants to speak and not speak,'
to hit and to refrain from hitting, this must lead to complete pa­
ralysis. At the end of this sequence, stimuli and impulses are no

1 42 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
longer perceived; they no longer reach the consciousness because
the defence reflexively takes over so that the impulse is throttled
at birth.
The compulsive person, therefore, has had the experience too
early in life that in the world very many things may only be done
in a certain way and that much that they would have liked to do
was forbidden. Thus the idea arises that there must be something
like an absolute rightness, from which his or her tendency to­
wards perfectionism develops. They then raise this perfectionism
to a principle; all living things should be subject to the conditions
they feel to be right, "for" - as Morgenstern has his Palmstrom
say - "that which must not, can not be".
A child growing up in a chaotic milieu can also develop com­
pulsive traits, but in this case they will have a reactive and com­
pensatory origin: It can find no possibilities for orientation, no
stability, it experiences a freedom which causes anxiety because
it contains all possibilities of arbitrary caprice. Therefore, find­
ing no stability in the outside world, it seeks an inner one. It will
attempt to develop orders and basic principles on which it can
depend and which offer it security. These can assume a compul­
sive structure because they are repeatedly endangered by its sur­
roundings, meaning they must be clung to ever more tightly.

E x a m p les of what the co m p u lsive person

.
ex peri ences

he following example illustrates how obsessive-compul­

T sive symptoms can develop on the basis of an existing but
still inconspicuous compulsive personality structure:

Ayoung man, rather too properly brought-up in accordance with m id­

dle -class principles, is escorting h is dance -class partner home after the
final ball. He likes the girl very m uch and on the way home feels the
desire to take her in his arms and kiss her. He is so alarmed at the bold­
ness of h is imagination and at the same time so fearful of being a wk­
ward and therefore repulsed by her that he begins to count the trees

E xa m p l es : 1 43
•
 lining the road. This distracts h im from h is dangerous impulses and
into something neutral. Once the way was paved, in all situations in
wh ich hefeltfeelings ofguilt or anxiety because ofhis instinctual wish ­
es, he began compulsively to coun t something close at hand. Th us h e
rescued himselffrom decisions a n d actions in hazardous situations
by this compulsive counting which lasted until the temptation was over.
He did not recognize the connection and was only upset at this, to h im,
incomprehensible compuls ion wh ich obtruded on h im and which h e
found annoying.

Here one can clearly see the cause, emergence, habituation and
the function of an obsessive-compulsive symptom: The cause is
a situation of temptation imbued with anxiety; in order not to
have to decide whether to renounce it or to grasp it, he inserts a
neutral activity as a distraction which saves him from taking ac­
tion until the danger has passed. In this young man's case, there
was a family history.

His mother had been widowed early and also had n oticeably compul­
sive traits. After the death of her h usband she made great efforts to
keep everyth ing in the apartmentjust as it had been when he wasalive.
This wen t so far that at mealtimes the father's place was still always
set. His desk and h is books were kept punctiliously as he had liked them
with the excuse that when he came home he should find everything
exactly as he left it. Th us, the home had something of the atm osphere
ofa m useum permeated with a hallowed tradition which also extended
to theformerly expressed opinions and remarks ofthefather that were
now presented as imm utable truths. This meant the father remained
beyond the son 's reach - he seemedfaultless and perfect. Th is caused
difficulties in his relations with women: His mother gave him the im ­
pression that women were someth ing exceedingly fine and delicate
and that compared with them, men were coarse and uncouth fellows
who did not kno w how to treat women - except of course the father
who was an exception. He had courted the mother for years without
ever being importunate and had pampered and waited on her. This
was obviously what he would have to be like in order to find favour
with women, would have to be in order to fulfil h is m other's unat­
tainable ideal of a man .

1 44 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
If his obsessive-compulsive symptoms had no longer been suffi­
cient as a shield against his impulses, he would have had to erect
more substantial safeguards. In this case, even just sexual thoughts
would have triggered the defensive shield. In critical situations,
he could have had a consciousness disorder, a sudden short-term
blackout, which would have meant an even more effective bail­
ing out of the dangerous situation; or he could have felt sudden­
ly exhausted. In short, there are various compulsive methods with
which to sidestep temptation and avoid conflict.

There are milieus which also encourage compulsive developments

in children. In addition to the influence exerted by the personal­
ities of the parents are their social roles and prestige requirements;
for instance, in military circles or in the case of teachers and cler­
gymen or other professions of the father that are aimed strongly
at outward effect and prestige. These more or less demand com­
pulsive patterns of behaviour. Such was the case in the military -
particularly in the old Prussian army - where pulling-yours elf­
together, getting-a-grip-on-yourself and not-Ietting-yourself-go
was a male professional ideology. "Attention" was aided by the
high and stiff collars of the officers' uniforms.

A h igh -ranking officer had two sons: he was very ambitious for them
both; they were s upposed to fulfil h is q uite specific expectations of
them. Their education was Prussian in thefig urative sense; expressions
of emotion, especially crying, were frowned upon ("Boys don 't cry "). In
the home, e veryth ing had to run smooth ly, the fam ily had to function
like well-drilled recruits on the parade ground. On going to bed the boys
had to "give notice of the inten tion to go to bed " wh ile standing strict­
ly at attention; the elder exactly one hour later than the other who was
younger by one year, as if he had a higher rank and therefore more
privileges.
The younger brother, a more artistic and emotional child, seemed
to thefatherfor this reason to be a sissy: he had to listen to 'you aren 't
a proper boy " when he showed his needfor tenderness or if tears came
to h is eyes when h is hands, h urting abominably,froze blue in the win ­
ter; according to hisfather's toughening -up methods gloves were un
manly. Toughening was the main topic in many areas. Thefather want-

E x a m p les : 1 45
•
 ed to send the boy to one of what were then the famous "FLJhrer
schools where the next generation of Nazis were to be educated. The
JJ

son was naturally not asked children were to do as they were told
andfathers kne w what was bestfor them. When he was fifteen or six­
teen he entered this school with its m ilitary drill and was desperate ly
unhappy; he was n o t s uccessful there either. Not long thereafter, dur­
ing parade when he was shouted at he began to stutter. Th is rapidly
progressed to become so serious that he could no longer remain at
this school, which, after all, was to train up a corps ofyoung men elite
in every way. With this symptom he completely th warted his father's
plans for h im without being responsible for it. A t the same time, it was
the only way out the only solution that the father would have to ac­
cept; a conscious rebellion against h im would have been unth in ka ble
and would have certainly led to even more severe measures - but then
he would never have dared to even think ofsuch a thing. With this symp ­
tom, h is subconscious found the m eans to achieve what needed t o be
ach ieved: to be taken out of the hated school but not to be g uilty of
this, not to open ly rebel against thefather. A t the same time he satis -
fied h isfeeling ofrevenge, a s thefather was helpless against the symp ­
tom. There was also a subconscious self-punishmentfor h is insurgency
in his s uffering - stuttering was after all something tormenting and
embarrassing.

As necessary as healthy limits and an experienced and convin­

cing authority of the parents are for the child, as dangerous is an
authoritarian education which demands unconditional obedience
without the child being able to ask the why and wherefore of the
prohibitions. Blind obedience as the most extreme form of such
an " education" creates the robotic non-individual who is cap­
able of anything in his or her trained and blindfolded submission.
The antiauthoritarian education - the " anti" should make us scep­
tical right from the start as "non-authoritarian" would have been
sufficient - goes to the other extreme of unrestrained licence which
it is dangerous to equate with freedom.
In severe cases, an attitude of defiance can colour one's whole
life. One is always in revolt against real or imagined coercion,
sees compulsion in a perfectly natural orders and rebels against
them. These are the difficult people who draw their self-confi-

1 46 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve pers o n
•
dence from their self-will, say "no" to everything on principle,
querulously find fault with everything thus neurotically making
up for all the things they were not allowed to do in childhood.
In families where the "persona" as Jung calls it - the role one
plays in the world or that one believes one must play - is taken
very seriously, it is quite frequent that the children are under great
compulsion to appear as particularly well brought-up. This atti­
tude, which the parents " must" uphold for " reasons of their pos­
ition" and which the world expects of them, forces the children
to be model children who must prove to all how well-behaved
they are to contrast favourably with others in their performance
and manners and who must never " disgrace" their parents. This
is made more difficult when the child goes to the same school as
the father, for instance. A little of the personality of the father or
the status of the family must, in a manner of speaking, be appar­
ent in the children from milieus such as this - it would be un­
thinkable if they were to fail or otherwise bring shame on the
family. This can become the basis of compulsive developments if
children are not strong enough to rescue themselves by rebellion
and to "break the mould" as one used to say. This is the health­
ier path but it is not forgiven; not by the parents, for them it is a
proof of the "bad character" of the child, not the proof of their
bad education; and the wider community - particularly in vil­
lages and small towns where everyone knows everyone else - does
not forgive them either; behind the moral indignation of the neigh­
bours is concealed their malicious glee.
Many children are sacrificed to such professional persona and
to the societal or social prestige befitting one's social standing; it
obviously takes a great deal of human magnanimity to set the good
of one's children over that of social ambition.
This brings us to something else characteristic of compulsive
persons: in order to safeguard themselves, they make themselves
very dependent on public opinion, on "what people will say",
what "they" say and do, or do not say and do, on conventions.
Here they reflect their bringing-up where they were always told
" one doesn't do that" and so on without being given a sensible
explanation of why or why not. When such imperatives and pro­
hibitions are demanded without offering the child understand-

E x a m p les : 1 47
•
 able reasons, it will have little willingness to comply with them.
In the fading era of patriarchy it was seen as the norm that par­
ents were always right and their authority was not to be ques­
tioned. Even in the myth of paradise a tree is forbidden to the
first human couple without their being given a reason. People be­
ing what they are, this naturally challenged their curiosity there­
by constellating their fall from grace.
Perhaps in these examples it has become clear how diverse and
complex the backgrounds of compulsive personality development
can be. They could be presented here only in a very shortened
and fast-motion manner. Every life plays before a wonderfully
multi-layered backdrop, and one would have to be a poet in or­
der to be able to capture and to portray everything that ultimately
makes us the human beings we are.

S u m m ing u p

n a certain sense, one can say that habits are the beginnings
I
of compulsions. Certain ceremonies in the sequences of get­
ting up, getting washed and dressed or other "treasured habits "
that have become entrenched give us a certain satisfaction, and it
upsets our mood slightly if we can't carry them out as usual. How­
ever, these habits are not felt as distressing, nor as compulsions;
they have originated mainly from an economizing of time and
energy, and we could change them if we wanted to if it seemed
expedient for us to do so. Such rituals are deeply and extensive­
ly entrenched in our social, societal and religious life. It belongs
to our way of being to create orders and rules of behaviour that
we observe regularly. It is only when we are unable to refrain
from doing something in a particular way, even if it is senseless,
that we can speak of compulsions.
We have seen that too rigid methods of education, too au­
thoritarian and doctrinaire attitudes of the parents and educators
can become triggers for compulsive development, particularly
when the child is subj ected to them at too early an age. Having
to avoid all undesirable patterns of behaviour from an early age

1 48 : T he c o m p u l s ive pers o n
•
 paves the way for perfectionism, for intolerance against oneself
and others and in an escalated form for dictatorial and dogmatic
traits. This perfectionism always reveals itself in some aspect of
compulsive persons and can lead to detached, aloof and hostile­
to-life attitudes. Perfectionism always wants to dictate to life what
life should be like. The compulsive personality wants to coerce
life in the same measure as it originally had to coerce what was
alive in its being and the effort itself now becomes a compulsion.
Only by keeping a ceaseless and alert watch over " chaos" and
defining it with rules and regulations can a guarantee be given
that nothing happens that may not happen. Even a picture hung
crookedly on the wall can be terribly irritating, not for aesthetic
reasons but because the order, the rules of how pictures are sup­
posed to hang, is disturbed. All, even the smallest, deviations from
the "norm" are reminders of possible dangers: If pictures are start­
ing to hang crookedly, what other things could start to slide into
disorder and evade my control ? Seen like this, some behaviour
patterns of obsessive-compulsive personalities become more un­
derstandable: their great annoyance at being disturbed and the
sensitivity with which they react to bagatelles. For them, a
bagatelle can be the "beginning of the end ", a little irregularity
and a brief wandering of attention could lead to an outbreak of
C what is suppressed, could be the final snowflake triggering the
avalanche of repression to start its unstoppable slide.
Geologists have a paradoxical saying that can illustrate this:
As it is very easy when freeing fossils from the surrounding stone
to do too much of a good thing and to damage the fossil by chip­
ping too close to it, they say one should never "make that last
stroke". It is just this, though, that is so difficult for the compul­
sive person; his or her perfectionism drives them continually to
extreme precision. As appropriate and necessary as this might be
in some fields where precision is the foundation for, let us say,
the functioning of a machine or for the stability and solidity of a
building; as constricting can be its effect in the area of living and
of living, naturalistic thought. Only compulsive spirits would ever
come up with the idea of worrying about how many angels would
find room on the head of a pin. Compulsive ways of thought eas­
ily begin to run in sterile ruts and become an inhibitory barrier

41
41

Summing up : 1 49
41
 for free creative energy. The having-to-safeguard against possi­
ble mistakes and errors assumes supervalent forms in their case
and can lead to the situation where they are never finished with
corrections and improvements because perfection has still not
been achieved. Therefore, compulsive persons always run the risk
of refining ad absurdum what are actually correct insights and
knowledge as they want to elevate them to an absolute, simpli­
fying omnivalidity. However, looking at this from a broader view­
point, they might be fulfilling one of life's laws: B ecause of their
rigid and wanting-to-fix-things-forever attitudes, a counter­
movement is set in motion which in a more living and realistic
way corrects the pronouncements and relativizes them, thereby
providing an impetus for further developments which lead away
from sterility. A compulsive "quod dixi, dixi" - "what I have said,
I have said forever" would not, however, allow of any more vi­
tal development. One could quote an experimental psychologist
once speaking of the soul to characterize the compulsive attitude:
"We don 't know precisely what we are measuring - but what we
measure, we measure precisely. "
In everyday life, the progression from one-Iast-Iook-if-I­
really-turned-off-the-gas or locked-the-door-when-going-out
can lead to ever more serious and time-consuming compulsions
which then begin to lead a life of their own. These are usually
experienced by those concerned as ego-dystonic occurrences that
are forced upon them: They themselves are unable to act differ­
ently. If they do attempt to desist from such a compulsion, in­
definable anxieties and feelings of agitation arise. Also charac­
teristic is that one rationalizes one's compulsions to oneself and
others, trying to find reasons for them, probably because one
senses their unnatural and compelling nature and does not want
to admit it. If, when in a strange toilet one lays toilet paper on
the seat and presses the door handle with one's elbow when leav­
ing and justifies this with fear of infection, this is exaggerated
enough; but it can progress to an infection phobia which sees
bacteria everywhere and which can increasingly restrict one's
enVIronment.
Help can only come from making conscious what actually lies
behind the compulsions and in acceptance and integration of the

1 50 : T h e c o m p u l s ive pe r s o n
•
feared, and therefore avoided, vital impulses. Generally these are
the aggressive, affective and sexual impulses. I have already indi­
cated that by defending oneself constantly against the proscribed
activity, one can thus indirectly occupy oneself with it without
interruption. This throws a light on those who struggle fanat­
ically against something: the chastity fanatic is constantly on the
search for the sexual and therefore in the fight for chastity is oc­
cupied continually with " dirty sex" - but from "moral motives".
This is generally characteristic of the compulsive person; they fight
more against what is evil than for what is good.
A patient with a compulsive personality structure could sit in
front of a waterfall for hours, fascinated by what he could not do
himself: let himself fall, flow, without the fear that suddenly there
would be no more to come, that the flow might cease. One can
understand that, in the case of compulsive personalities, the safe­
guarding attitude against transience leads to their behaviour with
regard to time and money. Here one can sense transience most
strongly and at the same time the possibility, the illusion of hav­
ing permanence and security in our power. The way I deal with
my time and my money is dependent on my will. In his novel
"The Woman from Sarajevo " ("Das Fraulein " ), Ivo Andric paint­
ed a brilliant portrait of a compulsive personality in all its hope­
less tragedy.
The custom of American undertakers of preparing the dead
to look as if they were still living, so true to life, is almost macabre
in its unwillingness to accept transience and death. This is even
surpassed by shrewd businesses that, for a high price, will freeze
corpses. The hope is that one day science will be able to reawak­
en them and bring them back to life. But only those who know
nothing of death are immortal, and being cognizant of death, in­
cluding one's own, is a part of every human being and is what
makes one truly human.
Now we will attempt to give an indication of the patterns of
behaviour of compulsive personalities with regard to the funda­
mental areas of life. In religion they tend towards dogmatism and
orthodoxy with concomitant intolerance for those of another
faith. Their image of God often bears the aspect of the strict and
vengeful Father, displaying all patriarchal traits and demanding

•
•
Summi ng up : 1 51
•
 unconditional faith and obedience. At the same time, they are also
often subject to superstitious and magical ideas. They are sus­
ceptible to rites and ceremonies which can become more import­
ant to them than the actual belief. The idea of being able to pur­
chase absolution or an indulgence for the remission of purga­
tory could only have sprung from a compulsive mind. Prayer
wheels and rosaries, if they do not serve concentration and in­
ternalization, easily become a stereotyped compliance with a rule.
In his story "Pamphalon the Mountebank" ("Der Gaukler Pam­
phalon"), Nicolaus Leskov describes impressively such a perfec­
tionist-compulsive piety, juxtaposing it with a simple humanness
in the figure of the juggler.
In all areas, compulsive people adhere to institutions, regula­
tions and principles and by following them to the letter turn them
into something mechanical and senseless; the more these signify
an unconscious anxiety shield for them, the more intolerant they
are when someone questions them - this threatens to topple the
shield. But it is just this striven-for absolutism which presents the
greatest threat to their faith, of being attacked by doubt, because
they do not allow themselves any questions or doubts. This is
why one finds in this sphere the most violent religious wars and
a continual effort to suppress doubt or to refute it. As in all cases
of repression, what has been suppressed can one day suddenly
break out, here it would take the form of blasphemous thought.
Insofar - from their position of power - as the churches misuse
religion to keep the faithful subj ect to feelings of anxiety and guilt,
they will foster compulsive traits which the great number of ec­
clesiogene neuroses is witness to. Today, one can sense the at­
tempt to become free of this, a resistance against such depriva­
tion of rights.
In the case of compulsive personalities, crises arise most of­
ten when their rigid principles, opinions or theories clash with
new developments, with new knowledge and progress that threat­
en their existing orientation and force them to give up their sys­
tems or when their security and possessions appear threatened.
As parents, compulsive personalities are reliable, consistent
and have a sense of responsibility. They represent values with con­
viction and give stability and guidance. With an escalating COffi-

1 52 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve per s o n
•
 pulsive structure these attitudes become more and more rigid and
absolute. "As long as I am alive we 're not changing anything ";
"we weren 't allowed to do that either when we were children ";
"if you do that again we are finished with each other " would be
typical instances. They take a child's age and individual traits too
little into account, leave it too little elbowroom, in every sense of
the word, and their ideas of how it ought to be are too inelastic.
For them, the maxim "if someone has told a lie you can never be­
lieve them again " is universally valid. They are often the "basta "
type, with whom a "no" is a "no" and remains one with no con­
tradiction, no reason given and which demands the blind obedi­
ence of the child, depriving it of its rights. They often bear a grudge
and give the child the feeling that mistakes are difficult to make
up for. This means that even small " offences" by the child attain
a supervalent importance, and the fear of guilt and punishment,
the moral anxiety, is intensified unnecessarily. Long periods of
estrangement and the difficulty of winning forgiveness add to the
child's distress. They set the child limits usually much too early
in the fear that allowing more freedom could develop danger­
ously. They have too little trust in a naturally unfolding devel-
( opment because they did not experience it themselves. Age-ap­
propriate experimentation by the child is interpreted by them as
the expression of dangerous character traits. The child is over­
taxed by being expected too early to be able to do too much and
too perfectly: for instance, senseless punctuality for its own sake,
pedantic orderliness; "you'll have some of everything on the
table"; or the amount put on the plate, in which the child has had
no say, must be eaten completely. If it shows age-appropriate at­
titudes of defiance, the adults already see the future rebellion
which must be driven out betimes. Because of the overtaxing hav­
ing-to-do-everything-too-early, the child becomes insecure and
has feelings of inferiority; its being loved is always only depend­
ent on its performance. One can raise overachievers or failures
with this anxiety and overtaxing. Their education throttles the
expansive and aggressive, and particularly the sexual, impulses of
the child. If it cannot deal properly with its motoricity and acci­
dentally knocks something over, for instance, it is reprimanded
as if the incident was destructive not only in its effect but also in

•
•
Summing up : 1 53
•
 its intent. This can result in uncertainty in trusting its own body
and lead to clumsiness, as we have seen. At the same time, the
child's preparatory attempts to develop constructive and creative
abilities are nipped in the bud. Thus parents breed espalier trees
at best and not those that can spread their branches freely to the
sky; they train more than they educate and turn the children into
puppets. They think punishm�nt is very important, and this is
where their sadistic side often comes to the fore: in the severity
of the punishments, in the compelling of obedience, in punish­
ments that ensure the child feels the power of the parents and
which often humiliate it. "Standing in the corner", along with cor­
poral punishment, was still one of the favourite forms of pun­
ishment in schools and families at the beginning of the twentieth
century. Also having to make humble apologies ("1 will never do
it again ") is one of the measures that can destroy the feeling of
personal dignity in a child while at the same time demanding from
it something impossible to fulfil.
Educated restrictively and compulsively themselves, it is dif­
ficult for these parents to allow their children a freedom that they
did not have themselves . Thus they hand on unchanged the trad­
ition they were subj ect to, even though they suffered under it
themselves. Compulsive parents are those who come most fierce­
ly into conflict with the younger generation, to whom they have
difficulty ceding the rights of their generation. They still repre­
sent the "tried and true" educational methods and do not realize
that the earth has continued to turn and that youth must grow
up in a changed world. This often results in the harshest conflicts
between young and old; these parents believe they must contin­
ue to show their power and superiority and have difficulty ad­
mitting to their own mistakes, as if this would rob them of some­
thing. They think they must represent absolute authority and must
give young people the impression they are infallible.
The dreams of compulsive people are often marked by par­
ticular meagreness and colourlessness. They tend to have fewer
dreams, that is, they do not remember them as well as others do;
in the same way that they have difficulty finding access to their
deeper, unconscious emotional levels. They tend to mistrust
dreams, which they prefer to label as bubbles, than to take them

1 54 : T h e c o m p u l s i ve per s o n
•
 seriously. Their dreams tend to use technical-mechanical images
for living processes as an expression of their remoteness from the
physical and natural. Embarrassing and anal themes are frequent
which are indicative of the emergence of their compulsions in con­
nection with toilet training. Inhibited aggression is expressed in
the dreams in elemental outbreaks (volcano eruptions, earth­
quakes, bursting dams, inter alia). The theme of impulse and coun­
terimpulse is also frequent; of a deed done which in the same dream
is then undone.
In addition to the already mentioned professions connected
with power, people with a certain amount of compulsive struc­
ture also lean structurally-specific towards professions in which
accuracy, solidity, precision, meticulousness, responsibility and
overview are important and which require perseverance, thor­
oughness and patience more than initiative, flexibility and cre­
ative freedom. They generally acquire an admirable expertise in
their chosen field and are reliable and consistent in their work.
Depending on the degree of compulsive traits, they can achieve
high levels of performance or turn towards activities in which the
precise regulations relieve them of having to make their own de-
I
cisions; improvisation is not their cup of tea.
So they are the conscientious and responsible civil servants as
well as the pedantic ones; tradesmen where the emphasis is on
precision; meticulous natural scientists, lawyers, surgeons, tax of­
ficials and bankers, pedagogues and priests, systematic types in
all possible fields. The borderline where the positive characteris­
tics of this personality structure touch the negative is very slim.
The judge can be the person with a feeling of responsibility mak­
ing an effort to be objective, as well as the inhumane person recit­
ing articles of law for whom a deed is a deed and who is not in­
terested in the motive and psychosocial background as these
would threaten to unsettle the system: the system which passes
judgement according to the letter, investing in him not only pow­
er but sparing him his own decisions and perhaps scruples as well.
The priest can be the exemplary father of the community as well
as the inflexible moralizer threatening hellfire and awakening anx­
iety and feelings of guilt with a power arrogated to himself bor­
dering on the sadistic.

•
•
S u m m i ng u p : 1 55
•
 Compulsive persons are often interested in anything histor­
ical. History as such interests them, as well as the history of art,
of medicine and of philosophy amongst others. What has already
gone before can no longer be lost and so the occupation with this
has something timeless about it. Archaeology, antiquity and relat­
ed fields have a particular attraction; they are the ancient philolo­
gists among the philologists, the prehistorians among the his­
torIans.
Due to the aspect of power, compulsives are attracted particu­
larly to politics; here they can live out their desire for power le­
gitimately and it depends on their human stature how they deal
with it. Generally they tend more towards conservatism and re­
main true to the prevailing party or existing regime, this is not
least because of the attitude that the old is at least tried and test­
ed and known. They rej ect everything extremist and experimen­
tal as being not in keeping with their character.
Understandably, compulsive traits tend to become more pro­
nounced with age, as, from a deep life instinct one generally leans
towards guarding what one still has and desires to stop the river
of time flowing. Thus the compulsive attitudes described above
can assume intensified forms: the compulsives want to hold fast
to their positions at any price, do not want to give up their place,
even though perhaps too old to fill it properly, which can result
in hate for everything new or young. Aging is generally very prob­
lematic for this type because they are so focussed on perform­
ance and volition and now have to learn to let things happen to
them, to let go. They like to think of themselves as indispens­
able. The abatement of their strength leads to slightly hypochon­
driac traits, to an anxious self-monitoring and health fanaticism.
Because they only take heed of the diminishing of their strength
and of their usual performance, they do not see the advantages
of aging which lie in being liberated from duties and in more let­
ting-things-happen-to-them. In the case of a strongly compul­
sive impact, the rigid self-will can make dying particularly agon­
izing because they see every yielding as a weakness and frequently
the most severe death struggles are the result.
In some cases, however, when they become older these peo­
ple achieve a patriarchal stature and venerableness, becoming a

1 56 : T he c o m p u l s i ve p e r s o n
•
 symbol of the values they represent. For them, death is a natural
imperative and there is no sense in struggling against it; it is the
ultimate reality to which one must bow and which one must ac­
cept with countenance and dignity when the time has come. They
put their affairs in order and have their wills drawn up in good
time. Some attempt to wield power from beyond the grave with
conditions laid down in their wills.
If the compulsive does not achieve this stature, he or she can
come to see the whole meaning of life as living on at any price
which can lead to macabre forms of existence; the suppressed fear
of death is shifted so that one cannot throw anything away, one
surrounds oneself with useless things and avoids everything that
could remind one of transience and the final end.
If we try to sketch a progression extending from healthy per­
sons with a compulsive structure impact through those with
stronger manifestations to the actual obsessive-compulsive neur­
otics, we can see two possibilities emerging. In the case of the
constitutionally vitally strong personalities, the line leads from
( the matter-of-fact, businesslike, duty-bound, reliable type via in­
creasing sobriety to the ambitious over-achiever - to the obstin­
ately self-willed and querulous - to the tyrannical person hun­
gry for power, despots and autocrats to the obsessive-compul­
sive neurotics of all degrees; at the end of the line is the psychotic
catatonia. For the constitutionally vitally weak, the line would
look like this: Unassuming and adapted - those mainly safe­
guarding themselves due to life-anxiety - the hesitant and the pro­
crastinators - pedants and naggers - the sycophants and toad­
eaters - ascetic hypochondriacs; and finally also the obsessive­
compulsive neurotics in the in the more specific sense.
The healthy person with compulsive structure impact is
marked by stability, resilience, endurance and a sense of duty. He
or she is ambitious and hard-working, plans ahead and is goal­
oriented. As they are usually attuned to future aims they are more
interested in what they hope to achieve than in what they pos­
sess at the moment, which is why they are often not very good
at enj oying the present. With their consistency, efficiency and
toughness, their sense of responsibility and marked sense of re­
ality, they are capable of achieving much. Solidity, correctness,

•
•
Summing up : 1 57
et
 reliability, constancy and clean living - this also in the figurative,
moral sense - are among their virtues. In their emotions they are
more reserved, although constant in their affections, as they are
geared to permanence in all things and do not like to be distract­
ed from something once undertaken. Their basic mood is rather
serious than otherwise; they stand by their opinions, are con­
scientious and strive for objectivity. In his book " Phillip 11 " ,
Reinhold Schneider described a man of great stature belonging
to this structure type.
The danger for these people always lies in that they unilater­
ally accentuate their need for permanence and security. It is, there­
fore, particularly important for them to recognize the possibil­
ity inherent in this attitude of their becoming rigid. They should
attempt to better integrate the counterimpulse of a living change
and to venture to accept what they believe they must secure them­
selves against - transience. They should learn not always to as­
sert their own volition but to let things happen to them too. With­
in the human community they have an important function; to up­
hold tradition and to strengthen it; in a way they are the " pillars
of society" as long as they do not let their safeguarding or pow­
er-hungry aspects to become overriding factors in the inhibition
of their development and instead allow the more vital counter­
forces to manifest.

1 58 : T h e c o m p u l s ive per s o n
•
 Fear of necessity
The hyster i c personal i t ies

A n d i n every beg i n n i n g t he re d we l l s m a g i c ... "

"
Hes se

he magic of the new, the attraction of becoming acquainted with

T the unknown, the joy of adventure - these are all as much a part
of our being as the desire for permanence and safety. Adventure
calls to us; far countries draw us; we know the love of travel as well
as homesickness, the yearning for a trusted feeling of security as
well as for impressions and experiences that expand our horizons,
enrich us, strike new chords in us and change us. We seek out new
people; we have the urge to know all the parts of our being and to
use them to their fullest potential, to grow in our interpersonal en­
counters, to mature and become more complete.
Here we come to the fourth and last basic form of anxiety, the
fear of finality, of the unavoidable, of necessity and of having our
urge for freedom curbed. This fear is the mirror reflection of the
fear, already discussed, of the compulsive person. If the compul­
sive person dreads freedom, change and risk, the hysterical per­
son, whom we will describe next, is the complete opposite. They
strive vigorously towards change and freedom, affirm everything
new, are willing to take risks; they see the future with all its op­
portunities spread out before them as their great chance. Corres­
pondingly, they fear all restrictions, traditions and limiting regu­
lations that represent values for the compulsive person. To use
a figure of speech once again: they live according to the motto
"just once doesn 't count " - meaning nothing is ultimately bind-

Fea r of n eces s i ty : 1 59
•
 ing and obligatory, nothing can expect to have eternal validity.
For them, everything should remain relative, living and colour­
ful - only the present, the moment, is important. "Carpe diem " ­
"seize the day ", it might never come again. The past is past and
no longer of interest; the future is the broad field of opportun­
ity; but is not actually planned for - that would already be too
determinative - it is only important that one is open to it, will­
ing to detach oneself from what already exists.
Now what would happen if, in the language of our allegory,
one neglected the contractive, concentrating force of gravity and
attempted to live supervalently the counterimpulse, the fleeing
from the centre, the centripetal force ? This would mean that one
would live from moment to moment, never having a determined
plan or a clear goal but living continually in the expectation of
something new, always on the lookout for new attractions, im­
pressions and adventures; hence, always easily distracted and se­
duced by the current reigning stimulus or desire being offered
from inside oneself or from outside, respectively. Above all, one
needs the feeling of freedom because order and natural laws con­
stellate the fear of being tied down, of not-being-able-to-evade.
The obligatory systems that are generally valid are experienced
mainly under the aspect of the restriction of freedom and then,
if possible, rej ected or avoided. The freedom being striven for is
more of a freedom from something than for something.
Now what happens when one is not prepared to accept the
valid rules pertaining to human co-existence or natural and liv­
ing physical laws ? One lives as if in a world of rubber which ap­
pears to yield randomly and can be arbitrarily stretched in any
direction. Ultimately, one does not need to take its natural laws
seriously as these are also in a constant state of flux. In a world
like this one will always find a little back door out of which one
can escape from the consequences of one's deeds. The law of
causality, for instance, the association between cause and effect,
may lie in the realm of physical nature, but I am not prepared to
acknowledge my being subj ect to it and, who knows, it might not
be valid just here, just now.
Of course, the result is that one must fear, and avoid when
possible, everything that simply and inescapably determines and

1 60 : T h e h y s te r i c pers o n a l i t ies
•
constrains us: biological and natural laws such as the genders of
male and female, aging and dying, as well as conventions and rules
of all kinds created by our collective for social co-existence in ad­
dition to provisions and laws. To summarize: one fears most the
inescapable constraining aspects of life and the world that we usu­
ally call "reality". That is, the world of facts that we must adapt
to, that we must accept when we recognize our dependency on
the physical laws of life.
We deal quite generously with this reality: one questions it,
relativizes, trivializes or overlooks it, one attempts to demolish
it, to evade it, and to find whatever other possibilities there are
of avoiding it, of not having to recognize it. Thus one attains a
semblance of freedom which can become increasingly dangerous
because one is living in an unreal and illusory world consisting
only of fantasy, possibilities and desires with no limiting real­
ities. One begins to live more and more in a pseudoreality, in an
"unreal realness". However, the more one removes oneself from
reality, the more one pays for one's apparent freedom by becoming
a stranger to " authentic realness ", becoming unable to cope with
it. The result is that when one does try to deal with it, the at­
tempts are unskilled and therefore correspondingly disappoint­
ing so that one withdraws even further into one's desired world
and the chasm between the wish world and reality widens even
more. This is the vicious circle in which those persons with hys­
teric personality structure are caught.
Let us look a bit more closely at this aspect of pseudoreality.
One of the realities of our being is the above-mentioned law of
causality, the law of cause and effect, of action and consequence.
This forces us into a state of lawfulness that we cannot trivialize
without punishment. From a sense that causality is merely re­
strictive, coercing one to consistency and to renunciation, the hys­
teric person attempts to evade it by the ostrich head-in-the-sand
policy. He or she merely pretends causality does not exist. Pos­
sessed by the dominating desire of the moment, the consequences
of which they do not even want to test, they act more or less ac­
cording to the motto " After me, the deluge". They have the naIve
tendency to hope that, just for them, causality and logical conse­
quences of actions are not valid or at least not for the situation in

Fea r of neces s i ty : 1 61
•
 question at the moment. They are so permeated with their wish
to have or to achieve what they want that they simply ignore the
possible consequences; they think only of the final result, as it
were, skipping the causality, which can imbue the desire with an
extremely suggestive effect. Here is an illustrative example:
A school class was selling badgesfor a charitable cause. Each pupil re­
ceived a list in which the amounts donated were to be entered and a
certain n um ber of badges for them to sell. Thirteen -year-old Inge ap­
proached people unabashedly with her charm and winn ing smile so
everyonefelt they could not say no. In a short time she had sold all her
badges. Now she suddenlyfelt the intense wish to re ward herself had
a cravingfor someth ing s weet - she had worked so hard, she had ob­
viously earned it. A t the same time the money was very tempting; it
offered so many possibilities - she no longer remembered where the
money came from and what it was for - and at the m oment, at least
it "belonged to her". She was unable to withstand the wish, took some
of the collected money and bought herfavourite treat with the vag ue
idea, characteristic of s uch people, that she would "somehow" deal
with the problem later; now, she was only full of the need wh ich de ­
manded immediate gratification .

For the hysteric, the following points are characteristic: the short
span between desire for a thing and seizing it, the general inabil­
ity or aversion to tolerate need-tension. Every impulse, every wish
must be satisfied immediately because having to wait is unbear­
able. In this lies their great susceptibility - they have great diffi­
culty in resisting temptation.
The lists and the money were due to be handed in at school. What to
do ? Inge wen t to her teacher and askedfor more badges; she was sure
she could sell some more and would then hand everything in togeth ­
er - she had left the money she had already earned at home (finding
too many excuses is also characteristic, as the weaker an excuse orfib
is, the more "reasons " need to be found to make it believable, more
anyway, than for a true state of affairs). She was given new badges;
now she had won a little time and perhaps a "miracle " would happen
in the meantime to solve the situation (th is gaining time and using
putting -off tactics is also typical). In the meantime it was already

1 62 : T h e h y s te r i c pers o n a l i t i e s
•
 evening and time to hand in the money. Then she had - it appeared
to her - a brillian t idea: she went to the neighbour and asked her if
she could lend her the m issing amount un til the next day: she needed
some exercise books for school but her mother was at a frien d 's house
and couldn 't be reachedjust then . She was given the money and once
aga in had gained time and with it space for a m iracle; now at least,
she was able to hand in the correct amount of money. The neigh bour
and the money owed her were forgotten in the quiet hope that by her
own forgetting, the neighbour would also forget the 'Jew pence ".
\
These people have honed to a fine art such vague expectatory imag­
inings of possible miracles and nostrums; they demonstrate an
amazing naIvete in the way they believe in them, thus avoiding
the demands of reality rather after the manner of "what I don't
acknowledge can't hurt me". And, of course, everyone forgets
something occasionally . . . Here one can clearly observe the dis­
placement tendency: The real issue, namely the pilfered money,
has already been forgotten; all that is remembered is the small
amount borrowed perfectly legitimately from the neighbour which
one is naturally going to pay back (the when and how is not im­
portant at the moment). Should the neighbour ask for it before
one has been able to pay it back, one can say that one had hon­
estly forgotten all about it and apologize. She might even forget
it - it is only a small amount for her after all, and I have often done
her a favour too. Or, I might even be given some money from
"somewhere" or can earn some by doing some small jobs - "things
are bound to work out".
Several days later, the neighbour asked Inge 's motherfor the m oney,
the whole story came to light and was m uch more unpleasant than
would have been the case if she had admitted to it at the right time.
Bein g una b le to with sta nd the i m m ediate g ratification of her wish had
become the trigger for a whole chain of unpleasant consequences,
wh ich ultimately made the fleeting enjoyment m uch too expensive at
the price.

In many ways, this example is illuminating and characteristic. It

shows a whole series of typical hysteric patterns of behaviour:
being possessed by a wish with the urge for immediate gratifica-

ID
ID

Fea r of neces s i ty : 1 63
ID
 tion which does not allow one to think of anything else at that
moment; the unreal attitude shown in disregarding the conse­
quences of one's own actions, of the connection between deed
and consequence; the playing-for-time and hoping-for-a-mir­
acle; the imaginative dexterity in evading consequences, although
when one darns one hole another usually appears; the reinter­
preting and falsification of the " story", that is, the actual incident;
the skill in forgetting unpleasant things, particularly one's own
feelings of guilt; and finally the avoidance of uncomfortable ne­
cessities such as having to do without, waiting and having to deal
with the consequences of one's actions. Nietzsche's words per­
tain to these people particularly well " I have done that" says my
memory, " I couldn't have done that" - says my pride, and re­
mains implacable. At last, memory yields.
With similar insouciance, the hysteric deals with another real­
ity, with time. Punctuality, time-planning and time-management
are a burden to them, appear to them as pedantic and petty­
minded, a belief they not infrequently demonstrate at the other's
expense.
Or let us take the biological reality, our subjection to gender­
specific conditions, to maturation processes and to aging. Here
also, one does not like to be tied down; one would prefer to stay
a child, without obligation, or at least youthful, for as long as pos­
sible because then the world forgives one much and one does not
have to become fully responsible. This is because responsibility
is one of those uncomfortable concepts that want to tie one down,
to remind one of the law of causality and disagreeable conse­
quences. And aging - this can be kept at bay with a number of
devices: one is only as old as one feels and does not have to tell
everyone one's true age. If one avoids everything that makes one
appear older, then one can uphold the illusion of eternal youth.
Starting with clothing, with which one can make oneself younger
and there are also countless cosmetic aids and cosmetic surgery
that support this illusion. The hysteric personality also thinks it
is better if one does not allow worries and upsets to affect one by
explaining that one cannot cope with them just now; if they are
absolutely unavoidable, one can always become ill and evade them
in this manner.

1 64 : The h y s te r i c perso n a l i t ies

•
 There is a similar behaviour with ethics and morals. Where
would we be if we took them to be binding, and who really does
that anyway ? Just once doesn't count and carries no consequences.
Who really knows what is good and what is bad ? Ultimately, every­
thing is relative anyway and dependent on one's point of view.
Thus the world becomes pleasantly plastic and malleable, and mis­
takes made can always be explained somehow. Above all: who
knows what goes on inside, or went on inside ? Fortunately
"thoughts are free" as the old song tells us. If one assures others
persuasively enough that everything happened the way one want­
ed it to have happened - who can prove the opposite ?
Logic is also one of these annoying realities. However, one
can avoid this to a large extent - one's own logic might be dif­
ferent from that of others, but no less logical. If one makes men­
tal leaps that others cannot follow and therefore call illogical, that
is of course their problem; I understand them and find them emi­
nently logical. And just think of the fantastic opportunities of­
fered by language once one has discovered all the things one can
do with it and how one can checkmate others with it! Thus one
develops a pseudologic which can progress to conscious or un­
conscious lying in which one can hardly ever be caught out.
Once again, such a person is not conscious of the actual fear
- in this case the fear of necessity and finality. The anxieties that
one finds in their case are agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces,
of streets; claustrophobia, the fear of being in enclosed spaces,
lifts, train compartments etc. Animal phobias are also frequent.
These anxieties are displacements of the actual anxiety onto the
incidental and harmless, particularly onto something that can be
avoided. If one has claustrophobia or gephyrophobia, fear of lifts
or bridges, one can generally manage to avoid lifts and bridges
thereby avoiding one's anxiety. The actual fear, of restriction of
freedom or of a situation of temptation, for instance, which is too
much to cope with either because one does not really want to do
without but is afraid to seize it - this inner conflict is displaced
onto external anxiety objects which then " solve" the inner con­
flict. Due to one's anxiety one is no longer in the situation of be­
ing prey to the temptation. Thus, if I am no longer capable of go­
ing onto the street - at least not by myself - I can also no longer

Fea r of neces s i ty : 1 65
.
 be prey to temptation. Naturally, this avoidance is not a true so­
lution and is also not a reliable anxiety shield - somehow or oth­
er one will always be confronted with one's anxiety and com­
pelled to deal with it. However, when one feels backed into a cor­
ner and sees no possibility of escape then panic reactions can arise
and one "takes the bull by the horns", which leaves no room for
taking stock of the situation and thinking it through sensibly.
Now we would like to show how these characteristic devi­
ation patterns can gradually accumulate and land the hysteric in
ever more hopeless situations.
What means can one employ in order to successfully evade
duties and ultimatums ? The most certain method appears to be
to only live in the respective moment, as if it had no history and
no consequences. If I was guilty of an error yesterday, did some­
thing stupid and was found out, then there is no yesterday and
life begins today. By breaking through temporal and causal as­
sociations, the hysteric personalities achieve an amazing plasti­
city; they live without a history, without a past. This means they
unburden themselves of a great amount of ballast, but on the oth­
er hand their life has something of a punctated appearance, frag­
mentary and chequered, there is a lack of continuity. Chameleon­
like they can adapt to every new situation but develop too little
ego-continuity which we usually give the name of character. They
therefore give the impression of being unpredictable and difficult
to pin down. They are always playing some role or other which
is tailored to the particular situation and its exigencies as well as
to the respective person of reference; and due to all this role-play­
ing they end up not knowing who they are themselves any more.
Thus they develop a pseudo personality without continuity, clear
contours and indiviuality of character.
A further possibility, when one is subj ect to anxiety and feels
driven into a corner, is to " turn the tables", to shift the guilt onto
others. Self-reproach is thus transformed into inculpation of the
other, which happens almost automatically, as is the case with chil­
dren: When one of them says, "you 're stupid", the other answers
almost reflexively with "stupid yourself". If one is being criticized
and reproached, this is transformed immediately into counter­
criticism and counter-reproach which can be quite far-fetched and

1 66 : The hy s te r i c pers o n a l i t ies

•
perhaps have nothing to do with the matter in hand, but take the
pressure off for the moment making autognosis, self-recognition,
unnecessary. This proj ecting of one's own guilt feelings as an ex­
trinsic reproach can reach such a degree that finally one almost
believes oneself that the other was in the wrong, as in "stop thief".
Naturally, this leads increasingly to a dishonesty towards oneself
which can turn into a lifelong lie., The outcome can be an under­
lying sense of insecurity and uncertain anxiety; in extreme situ­
ations there is still one role available that will protect one from
consequences and from having to accept reality: the ''flight into
sickness " which at least will gain one a little time.
,

The hysteric persona lities and love

he hysteric person loves love. They love it as they love

T everything which is capable of increasing their self-esteem:
the intoxication, the ecstasy, the passion; they like to ascend the
pinnacles of experience. If one could call the yearning of the more
compulsive persons apollonian, then the yearning of these peo­
ple is dionysian. Experiences which cross boundaries attract
them; not from ego-abandonment as is the case with the depres­
sives but in their case from ego-expansion, in the apotheosis of
the ego, as it were. If the depressive seeks to transcend himself or
herself in a commitment which dissolves the ego boundary and
in a symbiotic merging, the hysteric seeks to augment themselves
in an intensity of experience which lets him or her rise above them­
selves.
In their love relationships, the person with hysteric traits in
their nature is intense, passionate and demanding. They seek first
and foremost the confirmation of their self; they want to be in­
toxicated by their love for and of their partner and expect of this
the high points in their life. They know how to create an erotic
atmosphere - are often adepts in eroticism - and are fascinating
in myriad ways . They know how to play on this instrument; from
flirting to coquetry to seduction they master all the nuances. They
understand very well how to give the partner the feeling of be-

... a n d l ove : 1 67
•
 ing eminently loveable, which makes up a great part of their charm
and their sex appeal. They possess great powers of suggestion
which are difficult to withstand - the consciousness of their mer­
its and attraction is so convincingly presented that one just has
to believe them.
In love, they often employ the above-mentioned powerful
wishful thinking. They are the "veni-vidi-vici" type and take the
citadel by assault, not by laying a long siege. They know how to
deal with the opposite sex; a relationship with them is never bor­
ing. They often love love more than the partner themselves, and
want to become acquainted with it in as many of its forms and
manifestations as possible, full of curiosity and hunger for life.
They love pomp and glamour, parties and celebrations, always
"party while they have the chance", are good at organizing them
and are usually the life and soul of the evening due to their charm,
temperament, wit and straightforward manner. The one deadly
sin is not to find them loveable, this they find hard to bear and
will scarcely be able to forgive it. They are up for any fun and
games; the more sensational life is, the better - boredom is dead-
1y and they become bored easily when alone. This makes them
colourful, lively, affectionate partners, spontaneous in expressing
their emotions and capable of living the moment intensely to the
full. They are hedonistic, imaginative and playful. Fidelity - at
least their own - is not very important to them; secret love affairs
have a particular attraction for them and give their romantic imag-
InatIon wIngs.
. . .

Sexually, things are a bit more complicated; erotic amusement,

tender foreplay is often more important to them than the fulfil­
ment of sexual desire; they would like to say to the fleeting mo­
ment "tarry awhile, you are so beautiful" and to enjoy it as deeply
as possible, to postpone the end. They would like to carry on the
honeymoon forever and have difficulty in accepting sinking into
the everyday after the wedding. They love variety. If the devel­
opment of a healthy attitude towards their own sexuality and to
the opposite sex has not been successful, impairment of the abil­
ity to love, possibly leading to frigidity and potency disorders,
can easily arise. Both sexes like to see sex as a means to an end,
for the enhancing of their self-esteem as well as their wish for

1 68 : T h e h y s te r i c pers o n
•
power over the partner. Less from the need to coerce the partner
as in the case of the compulsive, but rather to experience the in­
toxication of the emanation of the power of their being. Women,
particularly, easily misuse sexuality extortively in their giving­
themselves or withholding-themselves.
The more this involves the actual hysterical personality struc­
tures, the more a demanding attitude and the need for confirm­
ation take on supervalent forms. Then the love relationship takes
on the semblance of an institution that one needs for one's self­
confirmation that is supposed to bear repeated witness to one's
irresistibility. This is because their self-esteem is constructed
mainly of such successes, of the admiration reflected back to them,
of being seen as desirable. Understandably, this becomes more
difficult with age when an attractiveness which was based main­
ly on the exterior begins to abate, which is why this personality
has the most extreme aging-related crises.
The hysteric needs a partner; but not because they feel unable
to live without someone, as in the case of the depressive, but as a
mirror in which they want to see themselves reflected as lovable
in order to boost their unstable self-esteem. Their narcissism, their
self-love need constant confirmation; this is why they are so sus­
ceptible to flattery which they believe all too easily. They espe­
cially need the partner to assure them of their charm, their beau­
ty, their importance and their other good qualities. This is why
they tend towards a narcissistic choice of partner, not from the
fear of the " complete difference" of the opposite gender as in the
case of the schizoid, but because they seek something as like to
themselves as possible in the partner so they can rediscover and
love themselves in the other.
Not infrequently, however, hysterical people of both sexes also
seek rather nondescript partners against whom they stand out all
the more glamorously while being admired by them utterly. This
is reminiscent of the fable of the peacock who wants to marry a
plain little hen; at the registry office, when the officiating crow is
amazed that such a splendid bird wants to take such an unim­
pressive hen to wife, the peacock responds with dignity:

"t and my wife love m e to distraction IJ.

... a n d l ove : 1 69
•
 Relationships based on such a strong need for confirmation are
naturally not necessarily crisis-proof; the partner will hardly be
able to fulfil such needs adequately. Then one seeks a new part­
ner and everything repeats itself. Practiced womanizers and man­
eaters are found along this spectrum, those who collect scalps and
whose self-esteem is dependent on the number of victims, and for
whom love is a game that they must win at any cost. As their ex­
pectations of love are too great, their life is full of disappointments,
dissatisfaction, moods, depressions and demanding accusations for
ever-new proofs of love - in which the financial outlay and the
public success of the partner, in which one wants to be reflected
as if it were one's own, play no small role. As their self-esteem is
almost exclusively drawn from proofs of love, they are of course
insatiable, and the ways and means they use to exact them myr­
iad: comparing the partner with others who "really" love them;
hints of what another partner would do for one; scenes and pas­
sionate reproaches because one is "not given enough"; catastrophic
reactions when the partner distances themselves. In all this there
is an obscure mixture of feeling and cold calculation so that the
partner never really knows where they stand.
If one has illusionary expectations of love or marriage and de­
mands more than one is willing to invest oneself, one will always
be disappointed. Generally, this connection is not recognized and
one relnains searching for " true love". This is why it is in the part­
ner relationships of the hysteric personalities that one finds the
most frequent separations and new beginnings. The latter are sup­
posed to make up for past disappointments, so new relationships
are overtaxed from the very start, and herein already lies the seed
of failure.
We all have our first experiences of the other sex with our par­
ents and siblings. The relations of the parents to one another, the
marriage or other relationship thus experienced and the experi­
ences with siblings form our expectations of partnership, love and
sexuality. If we were lucky enough to be able to love our parents
as a couple, without having to idealize them or on the other hand
to feel sorry for them or to despise or even hate them; if we were
able to experience their limitations, their worries and problems
as well as their j oys, their holding-together, their understanding

1 70 : T h e h y st e r i c p e r s o n
•
for and trust in one another, then we have a better chance of find­
ing a partner who corresponds to such expectations and also have
a realistic image of our own being-a-partner. Parents who believe
they must uphold their superiority and infallibility in front of the
child, who pretend they have an ideal marriage which, however,
looks very different behind the scenes, allow the idea of a possi­
ble ideal marriage to form which the child believes it will be able
to find later. And parents who do not fulfil the need of the child
with regard to gender-specific role models, who set a disap­
pointing or deterrent example, also negatively colour the child's
expectations of a partnership.
The love life of hysteric personalities is made more difficult
by the fact that they remain fixated on their first person of refer­
ence of the opposite sex longer than other people and have more
difficulty detaching themselves from their identification with
them. Hysteria commences in the last of the child's phases of de­
velopment - that is, at around four to six years of age when the
child, as we will see, identifies itself with the role models it has
encountered and acquires the first pre-forms of its later attitude
to its own and to the opposite sex. In principle, there are the fol­
lowing possibilities: One repeats the former childish-adoring or
idealizing attitude of the parent of the opposite sex or a sibling,
thereby expecting to find the dream man or dream woman. Or,
one transfers the old disappointments, anxiety or hate which one
acquired from the person of reference when a child and has not
yet dealt with - that is, one's negative experiences - onto the part­
ner as expectations. In this way later relationships are burdened
from the beginning with the prejudice that all men or women are
like those who were first experienced. One proj ects the former
father or mother image onto the partner and relates to this pro­
j ection as one related to the primal image thus not doing justice
to the partner nor to one's own partner role because one is too
bogged-down in the old role of son or daughter.
The son disappointed by the mother can develop into a mis­
ogynist and revenge himself on his partners for former disap­
pointments by seducing women and then abandoning them again
like Don Juan. He thus metes out to them what he experienced
with his mother. The daughter disappointed in her father revenges

•
•
. . . a n d l ove : 171
•
 herself on men in her own way: she can develop a hatred of men
or become an emancipated woman but with the wrong under­
standing; one who does not endeavour to achieve the equality of
the sexes from a feeling of justice and self-esteem but who wants
to turn the tables and her demand for equality means giving pow­
er to women as revenge. Or she throws herself away on a large
number of men in order to wound the father ("If you don 't love
me then I am worth nothing and can throw myself away " - the
psychodynamic background of many prostitutes). Or she be­
comes a Circe, seizing men for their sexuality, "turning them into
swine " as in the Odyssey; that is, using them, debasing them and
attempting to make them sexually dependent. Close to these are
the women who overtax men physically, mentally or materially,
exploit and bleed them dry, disempower and "castrate" them by
denigrating their masculinity. Such demonically destructive
women are often described in Strindberg's novels and plays. Fi­
nally, disappointment in the opposite sex or the fear of it can lead
to homosexuality. A brother or sister can also always take on the
role of the father or mother.
The bond with our first person of reference of the opposite
sex is a general human phenomenon that the French express as
follows: " On revient touj ours a ses premiers amours" . (One al­
ways returns to one's first loves.)
A further example of the hysteric's dependency on early per­
sons of reference, on their "family story" can be recognized in
the situation where they, not infrequently, tend to become in­
volved in triangular relationships in which they unconsciously
repeat their position between the parents. This is found especial­
ly in single children with this personality structure. They often
find themselves, apparently willy-nilly and as if ordained, in such
three-cornered relationships - often believe that it must be their
fate that all the men or women to whom they feel attracted al­
ways have a partner already. In reality, they are actually seeking
partners who are already committed - they can start an affair with
them knowing the other is not free, thereby repeating the old
rivalry that they had, as son or daughter, with their father or
mother. They have remained fixated in this, obtruding into the
relationship of two partners and trying to take one away from

1 72 : T h e h y st e r i c p e r s o n
.
the other by entering into rivalry with the one of their own gen­
der and cutting them out. They shy away from a relationship in
which the partner would be free as this would place seriously
committed and undivided demands on them.
One must know the life-background of such people in order
to be able to understand their behaviour; they are often only hand­
ing down the sins that were perpetrated on them. In their fam­
ilies they did not have the opportunity to develop their feminin­
ity or masculinity in a healthy way, they were too bound to the
family; or they had no role model for developing their gender
role, either because it was rej ected in them or because their sexu­
ality was addressed too early or inappropriately. This would con­
stellate the little woman or little man in them before they had a
chance to acquire enough self-identity and self-esteem for the man
or woman to develop; before, therefore, they were emotionally
mature enough for sexuality.
The main problem of hysterics with regard to love and part­
nership can be seen as their illusionary anticipatory images of life,
of love, of marriage and the opposite sex. The demanding attitude
and the willingness to give do not stand in a healthy ratio to one
another. It is just this that always triggers new disappointments
from which they could learn that their fundamental attitude is based
on an error which makes these disappointments inevitable. An ever­
alert yearning and the expectation that they are entitled to some­
thing without asking themselves what they are prepared to con­
tribute on their part are their most problematic characteristics.
This is evident in their choice of partner for a start; material
aspects and prestige - the partner's status, wealth, title and ex­
ternal assets - are more important to them than character and good
values. Here also they remain children for a lengthy period, al­
low themselves to be impressed by externalities which seem to
promise a pleasant life; disappointments are then the partner's
fault. The fear of experiencing their own worthlessness can, in
their case, result in an addiction to reassurance which, as with any
addiction, can never be satisfied because it seeks something " out­
side", something that one really needs to actualize within one­
self; in this case the striving for a true ability to love which is ca­
pable of creating a true feeling of self-esteem.

. . . a n d l ove : 1 73
•
 Naturally, the tendency to project one's own deficiencies be­
comes particularly problematical in a partnership. It can reach all
degrees ranging from recurring arguments as to whose "fault"
something was, through accusations and tendentious, fact-bend­
ing "logic" up to defamation and intrigue. Especially difficult are
the connections between hysteric and compulsive partners as they
are total opposites. The more the compulsive partner relentless­
ly and systematically insists on a hair-splitting discussion of the
situation at hand and on proving that he or she is in the right, the
more the hysteric partner extricates themselves with, to them, ir­
refutable "logic", with "knight's moves" of thought, as so appo­
sitely put by Schultz-Hencke referring to the unexpected move­
ment of the knights on a chessboard. The hysteric personality can
clearly feel the intent of the other to pin him down to past mis­
takes with no way of escape and attempts to defend him or her­
self against this with all the means at his or her command. If one
is more flexible, one can build them a bridge, if one allows them
the possibility of escape then things progress much more easily.
Instead, therefore, of driving the hysteric into a corner, the com­
pulsive partner should attempt to understand the situation from
the viewpoint and experience of the other.
The hysteric personality, however, tends to avoid schizoid
partners - these can see through them too easily and are unwill­
ing to fulfil their need for affirmation and admiration. They pre­
fer depressive partners who do have this willingness and fur­
thermore will allow themselves to be overtaxed. A long-term re­
lationship such as this tends to exist too unilaterally at the expense
of the depressive partner. Ties between two people having a hys­
teric structure are only successful when the hysteric structure im­
pact is not too strong - otherwise the rivalry and wanting-to-cut­
out-the-other constitute an unavoidable divide.
In literature we find many examples of brilliantly depicted hys­
teric women such as Somerset Maugham's "Luise" or Scarlett in
Margaret Mitchell's " Gone with the Wind" In the letters of
Pushkin and Fontane, it is easy to see the difficulties of having a
partner with a mainly hysteric structure. Here one could also men­
tion the fairytale of the " Fisher and his Wife".

1 74 : T h e h y st e r i c p e rs o n
•
 The hysteric person and aggression

he specific form of aggression that the child acquires be­

T tween the ages of four and six is that pertaining to rivalry
and competition. As in any phase of development, the earlier
forms of aggression also remain extant. Now the issue is gender­
specific aggression in its primal forms of courtship and conquer­
ing; more generally it is the struggle for everything that helps to
confirm one's own worth in the fight against everything that seems
to threaten this. Aggression, therefore, is expressed here in com­
petition with others, in a wanting to prove oneself; it is employed
in the service of the striving for esteem.
In contrast to the compulsive person described earlier, ag­
gression in the hysteric is more elastic, spontaneous, insouciant
and often thoughtless but, on the other hand, less unforgiving
and resentful. It ranges through all degrees of impulsive expres­
sion to arbitrariness and is more germane to facts than person­
oriented.
The stronger the hysterical traits are, the more the aggression
is employed in striving for esteem; hybrid self-glorification and
even fraud are the extreme forms, and there is an enormously ir­
ritable sensitiveness to narcissistic affronts. B oasting and an in­
satiable striving for esteem are then manifested; one pushes one­
self constantly to the fore, wants to play ''firstfiddle "; every same­
gender other is a potential rival who must be cut out in order to
heighten one's own glamour.
We often find a form of " display behaviour"; one wants to im­
press others, to be the centre of attention and this wanting to im­
press can take on more intense forms: the larger the insecurity
behind it is, the larger the discrepancy between illusion and real­
ity, between wish-ego and real-ego. From a lack of self-criticism
and self-control, aggression in this case has too impulsive a char­
acter; one is easily caught up by it and goes too far, in the way
that exaggeration generally belongs to this personality. Another
characteristic is the tendency to generalize - when feeling ag­
gressive towards the partner, for instance, "all men are spineless ",
" all women are dumb".

. . . a n d a gg re s s i o n : 1 75
•
 Hysteric aggression is often close to the earlier form of out­
bursts of reaction. While in the schizoid's case, aggression was an
expression of affectivity in the face of existential endangerment,
here it is used more for dramatization, to impress the other. In
their expression of aggression, the hysteric is the surprise win­
ner; they like to catch one unawares because this seems to them
to promise more success than a carefully prepared strategy. For
them, attack is the best form of defence. One could also call hys­
terical aggression "illogical". An example of this:

In response to the objective and justified, calmly expressed criticism

from her h usband for some carelessness, the woman reacted wildly,
completely ignored the issue, heaped h im instead with a flood of re ­
proaches that had nothing to do with the matter in hand and referred
to completely remote issues. She simply turned the tables, evading
reality by charging forward to the attack.

This can only be understood on the basis of the easily disturbed,

unstable self-esteem of hysteric personalities which makes them
react to the mildest criticism and the slightest charge with great
resentment. Due to the lack of identity with themselves, this es­
teem rests on a very narrow base and is therefore easily prone to
shocks; even slight insults to their self-love can trigger intense
feelings of hate where the connection with the fear of not-being­
lovable is readily apparent.
A special form of hysterical aggression is the intrigue. In this
one can also recognize the familial basis. One repeats uncon­
sciously the situation in which one stood as a child: having to
manoeuvre back and forth between the parents, and perhaps
siblings, because one was used by one parent against the other or
against a sibling, thereby becoming the obj ect of unsolved famil­
ial problems, an obj ect on whose back the marital conflicts were
played out. Intrigues, denigrating others leading to defamation
of character or extreme revengeful attitudes can thus emerge. If
gender hate is added to this, the vindictiveness can take on ex­
treme forms. Hysteric aggression tends towards "scenes", in
which they whip themselves up to an ever greater intensity, em­
ploying their histrionic-theatrical talent which is clearly geared

1 76 : T h e hyst e r i c p e rs o n
•
to an "audience" . Flaming indignation, melodramatic gestures and
passionate accusations are typical hysterical expressions of ag­
gression which often collapse in on themselves when the audi­
ence is no longer there.

The biogra phica l b ack gro u nd

oW does it come to pass that the fear of necessity and

H finality is experienced so supervalently; or, considered from
the aspect of the impulse, why is the impulse towards the centrifugal,
fleeing the centre and thus towards change lived so unilaterally? If
we look again for the constitutional factors which facilitate this de­
velopment we can presuppose a congenital vivacity and emotion­
al susceptibility, great spontaneity and the vital urge to express one­
self, to communicate, to present inner experiences outwardly; that
is, a sociableness, a need for social interaction as well as a marked
need for recognition. With traits like these, one is more dependent
on one's fellow human beings, on their sympathy and the reassur­
ance they offer. This can be manifested positively in vivacity, open­
mindedness, adaptability and versatility; also in an intense zest for
life that is contagious - such persons are never boring; they need
stimulus but are also stimulating themselves. An inborn charm and
often also beauty have the effect of awakening sympathy in oth­
ers from an early age; they are easy to love and are used to being
liked just because they are who they are; they are considered de­
lightful and sense this quite early on. That these advantages could
constitute a " gift from the Greeks" is inherent particularly in the
fact that because of this they experience being loved and admired
without having to do anything to earn it. This can pave the way at
an early age for depending on the asset of one's outer appearance
and awakens the expectation that being loved always and every­
where can be taken for granted. In order for such predisposition
to take on a problematical nature, certain environmental influences
are necessary that we will now consider.
Based on experiences in psychoanalysis, the commencement
of a possible hysteric development lies roughly between the ages

•
•
T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1
•
 of four and six. At this age the child, now growing out of the in­
fant stage and becoming more adult, faces important develop­
mental steps. It has now acquired more prolific skills and discov­
'
ered many more ways of behaving, but must also shoulder new
tasks: it must now gradually grow into the world of adults and
learn the rules governing it; in the first rudiments of its gender role
as girl or boy it must anticipate the future as a field of experiment
and a measuring against others. This also means that it must give
up its previous magical wish-world with its fantasy of unlimited
possibilities in favour of what we usually call reality, including the
reality of the limitations of its own volition and competence.
The child's inner and outer experiencing has become broader
and richer and comprises essentially all the areas of experience
that belong to the life of an adult. One expects of it discernment,
responsibility and sense - in short, the child must here fulfil the
reality testing, reality finding and reality acceptance that go hand­
in-hand with becoming an adult.
If these steps in maturation are to be successful the child must
have convincing role models to which it can orient itself. It must
observe what appears to be worth striving for being lived; the
adult world must seem attractive, its systems and ways of living
worthy of imitation.
At this time the parents are challenged in a new way; they are
no longer confronted by the infant for whom they were sover­
eign demigods but a critically observing child with an increasing
thirst for knowledge who questions and wants to receive reasons
for imperatives and prohibitions; who wants to be taken as a whole
person and to experience itself as lovable; and above all wants to
experience that its love means something to the parents, that it
has something to give. It is developing the rudiments of its gen­
der-specific patterns of behaviour, courting or conquering, and
wants to be taken seriously in this. The maturity and under­
standing of the parents is particularly important here, after all,
the child needs healthy role models for the tentative design of its
self which will lead to a healthy self-esteem and ultimately to its
discovering its true identity.
It is at just this time, in which the need for guidance and role
models is strongest, that the hysteric personality lacks them. In

1 78 : The hyste r i c pe rson

•
order to grow out of the infant stage and to take on the reality of
life, to renounce childish behaviour, to give up remaining an ir­
responsible child in favour of accepting responsibility and insight
into necessities - in order to take on all these new tasks, the world
must exhibit an order to the child that appears meaningful. The
parents must be able to awaken in it the wish to become like them,
it must want to identify itself with them. Only then will it be will­
ing to give up the early childlike liberties and patterns of behav­
iour. It must experience age-appropriate competence and gender­
specific affirmation so that it will have j oy in dealing with the new
responsibilities which it will take on with pride and a healthy self­
esteem.
Now let us imagine a milieu that is chequered or chaotic, where
today is punished what tomorrow is overlooked or even rewarded;
a milieu in which the child is still treated like an infant who need
not be taken seriously, as if one did not owe it honesty, as if it
were too small, too stupid, too insignificant for one to take its
questions seriously or to answer them truthfully. Think of the
parents who frequently have scenes and arguments in front of a
child with the attitude that it doesn't understand anyway so it is
unnecessary to restrain themselves while, however, expecting the
child to behave sensibly. If it behaves as it has been used to ob­
serving others behave, it is suddenly rebuked and when it asks
why, the parents did it too, it is punished after the motto " quod
licet J ovi, non licet bovi" (What is permitted to Jupiter, is not per­
mitted to an ox.). Particularly, then, the milieus that are chaotic,
contradictory, incomprehensible and lacking guidance and healthy
role models give the child too little orientation and grounding. It
then prefers to remain an irresponsible child.
An example of milieu conditions which foster hysteric per­
sonalities:

A man in h is m id-thirties came for treatment for symptomatic pho­

bias. ln the cinema he could only sit in the end seats, could not travel
in an express train ("Because of the long stretches between stops; if
I were the engine driver it would be all right - then I could stop and get
out if I felt frightened ',), n ot enter lifts, not drive over a bridge (he had
to get out of the car and go over on foot keeping close to the railing);

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 79
•
 he was prey to agonizing anxiety when he was alone in a room, the
ceiling couldfall on h is head; at the same time he wasfilled with anx­
iety that these senseless - as they appeared to him -fears would drive
him insane. Th is fear of becoming insane had been the one ca using
him the most distress over the lastfe w years (his bro ther had been in
an institution for the mentally ill and had died there).

Here an outline from his biography which will help to clarify his
anxIetIes:

As an only son for an exten ded period - h is brother was eight years
younger - he was very spoiled by h is mother. The father was a correct
strongly compulsive civil servant who always brought work home
from the office so that the fam ily rarely saw h im except at mealtimes.
The mother spoiled h im beh ind h is father's back, gave him money se ­
cretly, bought h im lots ofclothes and always placed herseljas a buffer
between h im and the world, in the case of difficulties at school,for ex­
ample. The father never n oticed any of this, was not particularly in ­
terested either and happy not to be disturbed with unpleasant things.
As a ch ild the patient was often ill, g iving the mother all the more rea ­
son to spoil him. Disappoin ted in h e r marriage to a m uch older and
very unemotional man, her son was more important to her than any­
thing else and she sought to retain h is love by spoiling him . In his post­
puberty period, together with a frien d, the son began trading on the
black-market where he earned good money and began to live extra ­
vagantly - which included lots of girls. Only the m other kne w about
these dealings which would have appeared to the father, with h is at­
titude and position, as h ighly reprehensible (the father was so correct
that when the bus conductor could n ot reach him to stamp h is ticket
due to overcrowding in the b us he would stamp two the next day). The
son n o longer went to school reg ularly but because of th is and also
due to his secret and illicit activities wh ich might be discovered at any
moment was increasingly prey to anxiety. He led a double life - infron t
of h is father he was the proper son b u t behind his back, shielded by
the mother, was someth ing of a gam bler.
A s attractive as this life was, he was subject to heart trouble with
increaSingly frequen t feelings of dizziness which were a somaticized
expression that h is life was built on lies. He had no real grounding, nei-

1 80 : T h e h y st e r i c pe r s o n
•
ther in h imself nor externally. Iden tifying with the father not only held
too little attraction but was also made very difficult because the two
had such little contact with each other. /f for instance, he came in to
h is father's study on Sundays - it was not allowed at other times
father and son would sit at a distancefrom each other, thefather read­
ing the newspaper, the son a magazine; they hardly exchanged a word
for they had noth ing to say to each other and because of a m utual
constraint they found no common groun d. He found h is father and
h is way of life strange; with h is mother he could laugh beh ind the
father's back about the "old man " and h is idiosyncrasies and exagger­
ated correctness. The mother, who had married the m uch older man
while still very young, mainly because of h is position, had herself re ­
mained a child in the marriage and in opposition to h im . Through her
son she enjoyed the "good life " which she yearnedfor and was th us in
no position to offer him guidance, she merely gave h im false protec­
tion when he encountered difficulties.
Th us he found a true orientation nowhere, had nofirm gro und un ­
derfoot; instead, in its place was the constantfear of a disaster where
e veryth ing could collapse around his ears (the ceiling couldfall on h im)
and that noth ing could support h im (his bridge phobia). The other anx­
ieties referred to situations in wh ich he could not "get out" when he
wanted to; the whole "dizziness "on which his life was constructed could
sudden ly come to light (the heart trouble with dizzy spells). The fear
of becoming insane was partly connected with his brother, partly it
was the expression of a vag ue consciousness that things could not
contin ue as they were for m uch longer.

The " golden cage" milieus of the so-called upper classes can also
promote hysteric development. In these circles appearances are
given priority; social prestige is more important than the chil­
dren, who are usually left to "personnel" while at the same be­
ing admonished to remember "who they are" and the roles their
parents play in the world outside. They are envied by their class­
mates because they seem "to have everything" and have to con­
stantly play the role of happy children - otherwise they would
be ungrateful; thus they disguise their misery with an arrogance
that no-one understands and even come to see themselves as in­
deed enviable.

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 81
•
 If the parents are not really adequate role models for the child,
only two possibilities remain to it. Either it identifies itself with
them and their false values in spite of everything, or it no longer
takes the parents seriously; this, however, can make it feel com­
pletely abandoned. When the child grows up it will take on the
behaviour demonstrated in the parents' example or will remain
in opposition to them, "not wanting to be like them at any price",
which is, of course, not a constructive ideal.
It is also difficult for a child if its parents have swapped gen­
der roles, when the mother "wears the trousers " and the father is
"henpecked". This does not mean that the gender roles as laid
down by society and supported by the conventions valid at the
respective moment are interchanged, but the distorted forms of
what is masculine and what is feminine. The henpecked husband
is a man who has been disempowered by a woman, who is afraid
of her; and a woman "lording" it over others has an attitude of
rivalry or hatred towards what is masculine and despises her own
sex. The child thus does not receive an adequate ideal for its gen­
der role which, at the very least, can impede development in this
direction and tends to become problematic later in life for its at­
titude towards the opposite sex. The parents' successful approach
to their own sexuality is one of the most important factors for
the child in order that it can be attracted to, and identify with,
the fatherly-masculine or the motherly-feminine figure.
Society should offer more varied opportunities to men and
women for accepting their gender roles and do more justice to
the many diverse possibilities of being a man or a woman. A uni­
lateral adherence to how " a man" or " a woman" ought to be and
must behave in order to be accepted by the collective as such has
its origins in hierarchical or ideological claims to power. Today
we are beginning to divest ourselves of these in favour of an eman­
cipation from such "roles" pertaining to both sexes and to free
ourselves from such defining fetters. The fact that what is mas­
culine and what is feminine is lived very differently in different
cultures should make clear to us that such roles are subj ect to
temporal conditions and not, as we tend to believe, to a biologic­
al imperative. Every society creates the male and female roles
which it needs and begins teaching them in early childhood. In

1 82 : T h e h y st e r i c p e r s o n
.
her book "Male and Female", Margaret Mead gives impressive
examples of this.
Another factor facilitating hysteric developments while the
child is at this age is the parents' unhappy marriage. This is par­
ticularly true of only children and when a child is taken as a part­
ner substitute by one of the parents. Then it is not only inap­
propriately overtaxed for its age because it is thrust into a role
for which it is not yet mature enough, but it also leaves behind
its uninhibited childhood much too early, becomes precocious in
many ways before it has had a chance to complete the age-ap­
propriate stages of development. A son, for instance, becomes the
comforter or accomplice of a mother who is disappointed in the
father; he is entrusted with confidences that are age-inappropri­
ate and that represent a burden for him; he pays for his role of
mother's confidant, which is too close, too intimate, with - among
other things - her creating antagonism between him and his fath­
er, often ruining their relationship because the son sees him
through the mother's eyes. The healthy possibility of loving the
parents as a couple and showing them both affection without feel­
ings of guilt cannot be experienced. Precocious traits are paired
with infantile ones and the maturing exchange with the father,
which is so important for proving oneself later in the world of
men, is skipped. Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for the daugh­
ter; both are robbed of the chance to build a healthy relationship
to the parent of the opposite sex.
A further result of forcing a role onto the child that does not
correspond to its actual being and is only a superimposed func­
tion into which it is pushed, is that it offers no real security. In
the main, the parents continue to treat it as a child in other re­
spects and this juxtaposition of having-to- be-an-adult and being­
treated-as-a-child is profoundly confusing and gives rise to feel­
ings of inferiority in the child when it cannot fulfil the expect­
ations imposed on it, not recognizing that they are excessive
demands.
Parents who are dissatisfied because they have not achieved
in life what they wanted can promote hysteric developments in
a child when they want the child to achieve in their place what
they did not accomplish. Not only can they not offer an exam-

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 83
•
 pIe or give the child guidance, but urge it into a role which often
is completely foreign to its nature. In this situation, hybrid hys­
teric-depressive structures of the personality often arise.
Similar cases are the result when the child is forced into the
role of "Mummy 's or Daddy 's little ray of sunshine ". Children
like this must always smile, be cheerful and in a good mood and
be a j oy to their parents; they are loved and admired for this but
have to live a fa�ade which delays finding their own identity and
also makes it very difficult. The role can become so much second
nature that they live alongside themselves, as it were, and later
tend towards severe depression or collapses when the role no
longer supports them or is no longer needed.
Also difficult are the milieus which, for whatever reason, are
too far removed from the generally normal, which represent a
certain social consciousness of status or a minority in the collect­
ive. The child learns attitudes and behaviour at home that are
valid in the family and even rewarded, but are rej ected in the out­
side world. The child therefore - usually when it starts school ­
experiences crises and situations for which it is not prepared or
prepared for in the wrong way. Disappointment in the world,
feelings of insecurity and of embarrassment and the bitter real­
ization that what one learned at home is useless in the outside
world fixate the child regressively and more strongly on the fam­
ily again. Hybrid hysteric-schizoid structures frequently form in
these conditions.
Thus the central problem of hysteric personalities is that they
have not yet found an identity for themselves. Either they can­
not find a way out of the identification with the examples in their
childhood or they remain bogged down in rebellion against them
or they assume other roles which they were compelled into or
which seemed expedient.
In addition to the above-described milieus which can foster
hysteria, a personality structure such as this can also develop in
an extremely compulsive environment. This is then in protest
against rigid and constricting educational attitudes that curtail all
living impulses and which prevent the healthy urge for freedom
relevant to this age. In opposition, however, one escalates into
extreme behaviour, more or less throwing the baby out with the

1 84 : T h e hyste r i c person
•
bath water by not only rej ecting all the supervalent constraints,
but also, in conscious or unconscious challenge, living the oppos­
ite of what was expected of one in everything. This explains many
a child from a particularly severe, prudish or authoritarian and
narrow milieu who "turned out badly". This is not a "real" hys­
teria, but a reactive one.
Let us just touch on the historical fact that formerly hysteria
was ascribed solely to women. This is already inherent in the name:
the word hysteria is derived from the Greek "hystera" womb. =

This should give us pause for consideration and perhaps clarify

an understanding of the conditions underlying hysteric develop­
ment when we ask ourselves why it was obviously mainly women
who suffered from hysteria. At the same time it might remind us
to be careful when accepting unverified academic opinions out
of a misplaced respect for science which, and particularly when
dealing with people, is often unconsciously tendentious - some­
times probably consciously.
The life of women in our western culture was formerly almost
exclusively limited to that of wife, housewife and mother. The
meaning of her life and the role expected of her by society lay in
the family ("and indoors ruleth the housewife so modest " as in . . .

Schiller's Song of the Bell), in contrast to that of the man who had
a much richer field of opportunities for self-realization open to
him. Due to this, a partner relationship had a different signifi­
cance for a woman than for a man. At the same time, the social
role of the man was privileged in many ways; male performance
was generally rated higher while women's was valued and paid
less and the woman kept in legal and economic dependency. Dis­
advantaged at every turn, limited to home and family for her pos­
sibilities of development and, furthermore, forced to fulfil the
ideals and expectations of men and society more than her own;
subj ect to collective prejudices that even, for a long time, denied
her a soul and later denied her her own sexuality; the situation of
a woman under a patriarchy was not an enviable one. Hysteria,
therefore, became the only weapon available to her for asserting
her desires and claims in the overpowering world of men and re­
venging herself at the same time. One could almost say she "in­
vented" hysteria as the behaviour for which there was no " cure"

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c kg ro u n d : 1 85
•
 and in the face of which men felt helpless and had to capitulate.
Hysterical behaviour is so irrational, illogical, baffling, incom­
prehensible and inexplicable that the man with his fund of ra­
tionality and logic was powerless against it. What was purpose­
ful in the reactions of the woman and what was illness ? How much
was not-wanting and how much not-being-able ? The dramatic
scenes, the physical symptoms, the outbursts of despair leading
to threats of suicide overwhelmed the man with riddles in which
he often foundered if he did not want to "tame the shrew" with
Nietzsche's whip, thereby destroying the partnership forever. The
sexuality of the woman, degraded to "marital duty" was often
the cause of her "frigidity", which was then also laid at her door.
However, behind this male hubris, behind his claim to power and
possession lay carefully sheltered and hidden his deep fear of
woman, of the " other side" of life which is experienced as all the
more dangerous and threatening, the more one overestimates and
overvalues the masculine. With the genius of the subconscious,
the woman found the counterweight to male " superiority" in hys­
teria which was simultaneously self-defence and revenge. It is no
coincidence that in a gradually declining patriarchy, the so-called
classical hysteria has become rarer; a woman who is regarded as
an equal and who is not suppressed in her opportunities to de­
velop herself no longer needs it.
What we can learn from the genesis of hysteria is: Suppres­
sion, debasement, bondage, coercion and obdurate attitude on
the part of the partner or society give rise to hysterical patterns
of behaviour as a counterreaction, independent of gender. The
other described milieus fostering hysteria are also independent
of gender.
In broad strokes we have drawn the genetic background of
hysteric personality development from which comes the anxiety,
characteristic of them, of being subj ect to constraints, of finality
and necessity. They experience disappointments when the pat­
terns of behaviour they have learned do not lead to the success
they expected - which they expect faster and sooner the more of­
ten they experience failure. They experience too little satisfaction
in their skills; this heightens their need for affirmation which they
now attempt to satisfy with meagre means. This leads to the hys-

1 86 : T h e h y s t e r i c p e rs o n
•
teric vicious circle which can only be broken through by means
of consistently acquired knowledge and skills. This also makes
their great susceptibility more understandable: Their general dis­
satisfaction with themselves and life makes them hungry for stim­
uli; they are always on the lookout for new incentives, for changes
in which they see promise of new hope. They always think the
changes must be undertaken outside, not within themselves; to
recognize this would be the beginning of a recovery.
For them, help lies in no longer evading reality but in recog­
nizing its rules, orders and laws in their logical consistency and
accepting them with a willingness to develop self-recognition and
maturity. Also necessary is the courage to be authentic and a will­
ingness for a necessary renunciation, which we must all have. Only
then will reality also show its positive side and give them the mea­
sure of satisfaction and fulfilment which is possible for them too.
It is an odd circumstance that the concept of hysteria is so of­
ten used derogatively; in the case of the compulsive, depressive
or schizoid person we are generally more indulgent, we are more
prepared to see them as sufferers. If, on the other hand, we call
someone a hysteric, most people seem to think they are justified
in having a feeling of moral superiority. This might be connect­
ed with the fact that we feel the hysteric is only playing at being
ill, could be sensible and so on if he or she "really wanted to ", or
that we have taken over and retained old prejudices. Perhaps now
it has become clearer from the cases described here that hysteria
is an illness with a demonstrable history of development and that
the person suffering from hysteria is as much a sufferer as other
ill persons. Maybe our prejudice is also strengthened because -
seen outwardly - it appears as though hysteria befalls those who
are privileged in life and to whom, for this reason, we are un­
willing to concede the right to fall ill. If one knows their life story,
one will have to revise one's opinion; ultimately we all suffer from
a past not sufficiently dealt with. Those whose past was such that
they were still able to shape their life fruitfully because they re­
ceived more help than injury should, out of gratitude for this,
have more understanding and tolerance for those less fortunate.

T h e b i o g ra p h i c a l b a c k g ro u n d : 1 87
•
 E x a m p les of what t he hysteric person
ex peri ences

The only child in a very problematical marriage, a very charm ing

I girl, was m is used by the mother to fulfil her o wn unsatisfied
cravingfor recognition. When she wasfouryears old she had to mod­
el children 's clothes on a catwalk. The mother would sit below the
platform and the child was terrified it would make a m istake or m o ve
clumsily. The cold and hard eyes of her mother, as she put it herself
registered the smallest "error ". If e verything went well, the mother
would kiss and h ug her infron t of the audience, presen ting a touch ing
picture of motherly love; if she had made a m istake she was fiercely
reprimanded at home and was forced to train even harder with the
threat that it m ust not happen again. The ch ild felt her mother 's love
could only be gained if she did not disappoint her andfunctioned well;
at the same time, externalfactors attained a supervalent importance,
yes, they even appeared to be the only th ing of real value. The adm ir­
ation mixed with en vy of the other ch ildren was only a cold comfort.
Later she became a sought-after model with many successes but with
an increasingfear of aging as her whole existence and her self-esteem
were based on her physical charms, as were her relations with men. She
had correspondingly many "affairs " wh ich ultimately left her dissatis -
fied and yearning vag uely for a "great love ". She did not want to be ­
come older than thirty - life seemed to her to have no meaning after
that. She reacted with severe depression to the smallest weight gain as
her mothers sharp eyes were still upon her and evaluating her strictly
with regard to her market value. The m other arranged introductions
for her to rich men and hoped to ensure a secure old age for herself
with a rich son -in -law. A n alm ost successful suicide attemptfinally led
to psychotherapy and the whole m isery behind the beautiful fa �ade
was brought to light - the fa �ade that had been the en vy of so many
- in many ways a typical outcome in this and similar professions.

A woman with strongly hysteric traits attempted to control her h us ­

band completely. In her ownfam ily, the father had been a more o r less
comic fig ure, good enough to ensure the living standard of the fam ­
ily but who was otherwise a "negligible q uan tity". She now regarded

1 88 : T h e hyst e r i c p e r s o n
•
her h usband in the same light mainly as a source of income. She was
supported in th is by h er m other with wh om sh e spent more time than
in her o wn home. Her motherfrequen tly den igrated her son -in -Iaw ­
she thought her daughter ((deserved better". The son -in -law was a
teacher and therefore had a ((s ecure "job and could lookforward to a
pension but great riches were not to be expected of h im . She encour­
aged her daugh ter to get as m uch out of h im as possible and to en ­
sure herself a comfortable life. So the daughter indulged her inclin ­
ations and pleasures and neglected her household. She did not wan t
any children a n d h e r attitude was that h e r h usband should b e g lad h e
was allowed to love s uch a charming a n d desirable creature a s her­
self Her h usband, who had originally been happy with her capricious
nature, had hoped that her difficult traits would smooth out with mar­
riage and children. However, this did not happen, nor did h is wife wan t
to give up the close ties to h e r mother - s h e remained more her daugh ­
ter than a wife who would stand by h im. The estrangemen t between
them gre w greater. When her husband entered into a relationsh ip with
another woman, the wife disposed of the past and her own part in the
events with one broad sweep,focussing only on the currentfact of h is
infidelity which made him the g uilty party. She was not prepared to
confront herself with her o wn self and her behaviour, although th is
would have represen ted a chance for insight andfor talking about the
problems wh ich might h a ve brought them closer together again - but
that would have been too m uch constricting reality, would have de ­
manded too m uch unpleasant self-recognition and would h a ve had
been too stren uous.

In this case, the woman had not detached herself from her fam­
ily, particularly from her mother; she was still deeply embedded
in identification with her and adopted unquestioningly her stan­
dards and opinions. Such incomplete detachments from early per­
sons of reference are characteristic of hysteric personalities. Here
is a further example with a somewhat fuller description of the
background milieu:

Miss P. was the only daugh ter of a very difficult marriage. The father
was a liberal and successful politician but who was at home tyranni­
ca I,fu 11 of cap rice and intolerance, an extreme despot. The mother, who

•
•
Exa m ples : 1 89
·
 herself came from a fam ily where the men enjoyed patriarchal priv­
ileges and the women were relegated to secon d place, had remained
a narrow-minded mother hen, anxious and dependent but at the same
time doggedly and obstinately hanging on to the prejudices and opin ­
ions that had been prevalen t in herfam ily. She had n e ver bothered to
form her own judgemen ts about people or life questions; the more in ­
secure she felt in herse!f the more strongly she defended what she
took as gospel. She lived in a {(one-world " in wh ich there were no prob­
lems because {(o ne " always knew how {(one " should behave.
She utterly adm ired her successful and well-kno wn h usband, left
all decisions up to h im {{(after an you understand it better': {(t am of
your opinion " - as a good wife {(one " sho uld have the same opin ion as
{(one 's " h usband), subordinated herself completely to h im and th us
never developedfurther in her marriage. This did not interest her h us ­
band m uch anyway a s he was satisfied t o have such an amenable crea­
ture at home who looked after him and adm ired him and who spoiled
him when he came homefrom hisfrequentjourneys. On the other hand,
she also bored h im because she was so uninteresting and lacking in
independence. Because she did not take herself serio usly, neither did
he and soon had affairs with other women. She found out but he did
not even bother to deny it. She did not want to get divorced because
that would have meant standing on her own two feet; he did not wan t
to either for reasons of con ven ience, this way h e h a d h is adven tures
as well as h is home - and also, a divorce might have damaged h is
reputation. She reacted with helplessness to the situation, first of all
subjecting h im to despairing scenes and reproaches which only bored
and disg usted him. So everyth ing stayed as it was, only that in her dis ­
tress she clung more and m ore to her da ugh ter. She confided her
troubles to her ch ild very early, not only burdening her inappropriate ­
ly for her age but also managing to make her see the father through
the mother's eyes as a bad man and a deterrent example of what {(m en "
were like. The da ughter sided m ore with the mother beca use she spoil­
ed her and gave her m ore attention than the always b usy, frequently
travelling and so impatient and unpredictable father.
On his part the father became more interested in her when she
reached puberty and turned in to a very attractive young girl. He flirted
with her, obviously preferring her to the mother, made complimentary
remarks about herfig ure and caressed her in a way that was notjust

1 90 : T h e hyste r i c person
•
fatherly any more. The two de veloped a relationship with erotic n u ­
ances which made herconscious ofher physical attractions.A t the same
time this put her in a difficult emotional situation as the beha viour of
the father turned her into the rival of her m other, whom she needed
so m uch for her reliability and constant availability. Th us on the one
hand, she was flattered by the masculine recogn ition and affection of
herfather which gave her a whole newfeeling of self-esteem but on
the other, she hadfeelings of guilt towards the mother beca use in the
father's presence the mother was more or less degraded to the house ­
keeper. He undertook the enjoyable things - going o ut visits to the
city, etcetera, only with her. A t the same time she also felt a secret
triumph that she had cut her mother o ut; she was, however, anxious
about forfeiting her mother's love because, at the end of the day, it
was her mother to whom she could always tell her troubles and on
whom she could rely,from whom she received emotional warmth .
So she was pulled back and forth between contradictory feelings:
The father represented for her the "big wide world " and with h is life­
style awakened hazy expectations and vague ideas of a life which, she
clearlyfelt, her mother would never be able to satisfy - the mother was
diffident and m uch m ore focussed on doing without. She was frigh t­
ened of that world in which she feared she would not be able to assert
herself and which, she felt had also taken her h usband a wayfrom her.
Th is problematical situation became more pronounced when the
paren ts separated without being divorced; the father moved to a lar­
ger city and she remained with her mother in the customary condi­
tions. With the departure of the father, the {(big wide world " seemed to
depart also. She moved closer to her mother who,for her part saw her
remaining life interest bound up in her daughter. By spoiling her and
awakening feelings ofguilt when the da ughter wanted to lead her own
life and left the mother on her own, she tied the daughter to her, there­
by exhibiting the same behaviour she had shown towards her h usband.
Disappointed by herfather, the daughter now exploited the more than
willing mother for what she could get. In unconscious identification
with the father, in an attempt to balance his loss, she now tyrannized
the mother on her o wn account, treating her as the father had done.
Th us both women contin ued in the old marriage situation with the al­
teration that the daughter took on the role of the father: she criticized
the mother as herfather had done, let herself be spoiled and waited on

Exa m ples : 191

.
 by her and took out her dissatisfaction and moods on her. The mother
bore all this because of herfear of losing the daughter.
The daughter now saw her father only at great in tervals when he
in vited her to the big city. She had gro wn up in the meantime and was
even more attractive, so the father,full offatherly pride, could go out
with ayoung lady on h is arm who turned other men 's h eads and whom
he spoiled for a short time as if she were h is girlfrien d. Wh ile he did
not give his wife very m uch m oney so that she and the daughter had
to practice strict economy, in the few days of h is daugh ter's visit, he
would spread out the g lamour ofhis life before her. He took her to dine
in elegant restaurants, bought her expensive clothes an djewe lie ry, took
her to the opera and so forth . But as quickly as the glamour shone, so
too did itfade and who knewfor how long. The daughter was sen t back
to her mother in the narrow m iddle -class world, in which the dresses,
the jewellery and the expectations did n ot fit at all and only served to
heighten her dissatisfaction.
Th us she learned to have expectations that she could not fulfil
through her own efforts. Expectations of life which she assumed were
her right - here she was not e ven very m uch in error because herfather,
with h is lifestyle, could have made m uch possiblefor her; ifhe had paid
her more attention her development would have taken a different
course. The mother relieved h er of as m uch as possible in order to be
needed by her. From herfear of losing the daughter too and being left
totally alone, she was not in terested in her daughter learning any
sensible trade - this would h a ve threatened their togetherness. The
father's opinion was, "My daughter doesn 't have to go to work " - an
attitude often found in self-made men towards the ir ch ildren; the
pride in what they have achieved with their own hands, the pride that
they "can afford " not to have their children work, that their daugh ­
ters need not earn their o wn money lets them forget what the results
might befor these children. The daughter herselfhad n o particular in ­
clination to follow any profession, was presumably also living an un ­
conscious revenge on the parents by remain ing dependen t on them,
which one couldform ulate th us: "ljyou have made e verything so dif-
ficult for m e so that I don 't know where I belong, then the least you
can do is look after m e " - which rem inds one of the saying, "It serves
myfather right ifmy handsfreeze, why doesn 't he buy me any gloves ?".
Behind this macabre h umour often lies hopelessness and despair.

1 92 : The hyste r i c pe rson

•
 So Miss P. contin ued to gro w up; she was charm ing, dem anding,
kne w how to dress and "make con versation ': had inherited h er fa ­
ther's airs but neither his capacityfor hard work nor h is competence.
Not used to working, she lived like the sleeping beauty waitingfor her
prince. However, none appeared because she did not m o ve in those
circles and men of more m odest means did not "ha ve enough to offer
her". Behind the outwardly worn attitudes of pride, expectations and
confidence, she had remained an insecure little girl, inhibited and
fixated on her m other, who had to veil this insecurity from the world
with her arrogant behaviour. She got in to the habit of speaking with
a, what she assumed to be gen teel, slightly nasal intonation and at
first sight gave the impression of a somewhat boredyoung ladyfrom
the "leisure classes " who kne w her way around the world.
Against th is background we have outlined, Miss P. developed in ­
creasing anxiety conditions. She could no longer do anything without
the mother, no longer even go out alone. She sufferedfrom an anxiety
neurosis with obtrusive symptoms which were also expressed in phys ­
ical symptoms s uch as tachycardia, dizziness and sleep disorders.
These resulted in her traipsingfrom doctor to doctor - with her mother
- and the bills were sent to the father who, however, soon refused to
pay them. Her actual fear, the fear of reality, of proving herself, of
learning someth ing and of clear-cut decisions as to how she wanted
to live her life as well as the fear of having to give up her ch ildlike and
im mature attitudes were s h ifted onto these fears wh ich were an
excuse for not being able to do any of th is after all, she was ill. The
anxiety neurosis fulfilled the following functions: It bound the mother
to her as a b uffer and protection between her and the world; it saved
her the disappointment of recognizing that although she had great
expectations of life, about which she spun elaborate fantasies in day­
dreams, she had not acquired the skills in herselffor achieving them.
It was also a revenge on the parents and she now had a "legitimate "
excuse for avoiding anything unpleasan t.

Of course, this example is too simplified and quickly sketched

but, considering all the possible variations of a hysteria-fostering
milieu, it does allow one to recognize many typical features which
we will sum up as follows:

Exa m ples : 1 93
•
 A difficult marriage of the parents into which the child - especially an
only child - is drawn into in an age -inappropriate manner; a lack of
real guidance and gender-specific role -models; a milieu full of contra ­
dictions with too little opportunityfor healthy orientation to the world;
a fixation on one parent for too long; a lack of solid skills and know­
ledge; temptations and a wakening ofvague expectationsfor thefuture;
and resulting from all this, no s uccessful identification with oneself.
Miss P. never really kne w what "reality" really was; the generous
world of herfather or the narrow but nevertheless emotionally warm
and pampering world of her mother. What should she be herself?
Should she be a great lady ? But how did one become that ? Or should
she be like the mother ? But what a boring and unattractive idea that
was ! And what would she do if the mother ever died ? This was not to
be imagined and caused her, in spite of all her tormen ting and ex­
ploitation of her mother, to often be very nice to her in order to keep
herfor herself as long as possible. One can understand the hopeless ­
ness of the relationsh ip between the two women - they needed each
other too m uch so that they could not let go of each other the be­
coming adult of one of them would h a ve threatened the neurosis pro ­
tecting them, would have forced them both in to steps towards mat­
uration, wh ich they were afraid of The illness of the daughter was an
alarm signalfrom the still-healthy part in her that things could not go
on as they were for m uch longer.

S u m m ing u p

ysterical personalities live in a pseudo reality which is

H demonstrated in a variety of areas. The question of au­
thenticity is their central problem - it is the inner reflection of
how they avoid reality by assuming "roles".
In their case, religion often becomes a non-binding belief based
on pragmatism - one never knows when the church might come
in handy. Here also, the appearance is more important to them
than authenticity; it is enough that the forms are observed. The
idea that one can rid oneself of all guilt in penitence and confes­
sion and can start again as if reborn in all innocence appeals to

1 94 : T h e hyste r i c pe rso n
•
them very much. They like to think of God in the sense of a good
father, who, of course, loves them particularly and will definite­
ly prove it one day. Thus they remain in many ways childlike and
immature, naIve and with a belief in miracles, are easily tempted
by promises of salvation that do not demand great self-sacrifice.
This is why they are often members of corresponding sects that
appeal to their need for sensation. As patients in psychotherapy
they would like best to be hypnotized with the expectation of
being rid of their difficulties in the twinkling of an eye without
any effort on their part.
Towards ethics they also have a similar naIve and non-bind­
ing attitude. The possibility of relativizing everything and of seek­
ing the scapegoat outside, in the other and never in oneself, is tak­
en full advantage of. This impedes autognosis and autocriticism
which is why they rarely learn anything from their crises.
In their case also we are ultimately dealing with general hu­
man issues in which we all participate to varying degrees because
we must all travel through the imprinting developmental stages
of our childhood with their concomitant tasks and anxieties. We
are acquainted with the same process of projecting our own de­
ficiencies and feelings of guilt onto others in order to exonerate
ourselves, and also in the collective sense where it can play a large
and dangerous role. In this case an " enemy" is particularly suit­
ed to such proj ections, and one has the impression that enemies
must be invented for discharging one's own guilt. Whole peoples,
religious denominations and races tend to proj ect onto one an­
other what they refuse to recognize in themselves. This willing­
ness to project can be fanned into flame by the unscrupulous
among those in power and exploited politically or ideologically.
Such uncontrolled and impassioned projections contribute deci­
sively as a psychodynamic background to wars, racial hatred and
religious conflicts. This wanting-to-free-oneself from an onerous
and guilt-ridden past is a general human need. In contrast to the
depressives, who feel they are guilty of too much, the hysterics
tend to forget their guilt or to disclaim it. The word "lapse", which
through a quirk of language can be used in a temporal sense as
well as in a moral one, could make us think - do our lapses elapse
with time ? The hysterical part of us would like to think so.

•
•
Summing up : 1 95
·
 As parents and educators, people with an hysteric personal­
ity impact can enthuse and carry one along; they have a strong
suggestive power, are persuasive and can give the child the feel­
ing that life is beautiful and worth living. In their emotional ap­
proach they tend to be more spontaneous than reliable; children
see their parents as lovable and are proud of them, admire them;
the parental home has " atmosphere", is hospitable and many envy
them their parents - frequently, however, only until they perceive
that it is mainly a fa�ade. When the parents have a preponderance
of the hysterical structure, the main difficulty lies in the lack of
consistency in the child's education. Spoiling and deprivation of­
ten lie very close together so that the child has difficulty orient­
ing itself, never really knows what to expect; usually this is be­
cause the behaviour of the adults is dependent on their mood and
less on objective facts. Thus they often convey an emotional " April
weather" which has the effect of making the child feel insecure
and confused. Frequently they awaken unrealistic expectations
of life. If they have disappointed the child or must insist upon a
necessary sacrifice, they will make vague promises of some dis­
tant future or other - "when you are grown up " - thus they dis­
tract the child from a discussion with them and the possibility of
gaining insight into why the sacrifice is necessary. Every sacrifice
or relinquishment is then connected in the child's mind with the
expectation of a reward due shortly. This awakens in the child
the dangerous expectation of a future full of miracles that will
take place sooner or later and sustains its illusionary wishful think­
ing instead of the child being guided towards reality.
In this way, as well as in others, they do not really give the
child any useful tools on its life's path, too few sensible and sup­
portive experiences. This paves the way for later disappointments
in its own self and in life. On the one hand, they tie the child too
intimately to themselves and, on the other, suddenly thrust it away
if it becomes a demand, a burden and a responsibility. If the child
seeks understanding for its problems, it will suddenly feel aban­
doned and must realize that the professions of love were really
only empty words. Hysterical parents cannot tolerate criticism
from the child, take it as a personal affront and have great diffi­
culty in admitting their own errors - in contrast to compulsive

1 96 : T h e h y st e r i c p e r s o n
•
persons not from a claim to power and perfectionism but from
wounded vanity and self-love. If pinned down by the child and
asked to explain themselves, they do not respond to this concern
but merely emphasize that they always want what is best for it
and have sacrificed so much for it. The child then has feelings of
guilt due to its ingratitude instead of having its difficulties taken
seriously.
Also dangerous is the tendency to "educate" one's children to
be model children; they are then supposed to reflect glory onto
the parents and dare not disappoint them, this would mean los­
ing their love. Generally, the danger of pushing the child into a
particular role is the greatest with these people. This is partly be­
cause they misuse the child in order to enhance their own status,
partly because it must fulfil the parents' own unfulfilled desires -
remember the example of the model.
In politics, hysterics prefer to represent the liberal or revolu­
tionary parties, not least from a need of sensation as well as an
uncertain dissatisfaction and expectations of the future that are
just as vague. However, they are not revolutionaries with the
severity and consequence of the schizoid: they believe in progress,
often nai:vely by having faith in the new only because it is new
and different - here again we have the clear antithesis to the com­
pulsive person who holds fast to the old because it is at least tried
and true. A politician of great stature with hysteric impact was,
according to the description of Andre Maurois, Benj amin Dis­
raeli. As politicians they are the thrilling and inspiring speakers
who tend to promise too much. Often they are leadership per­
sonalities who are more interested in initiating things, in follow­
ing new paths than sitting at the drawing board planning the nec­
essary details for the execution of their ideas. They can also be
the tempter, cunningly exploiting the secret desires of their vot­
ers in order to climb higher and living according to the precept
"apres moi le deluge" - they are those who do not care what ava­
lanche they have kicked loose; sometimes they are the Vabanque
players putting everything on one chance and rising like a phoenix
out of the ashes after every defeat.
In the social community they are suited for all professions that
require a personality-specific approach, an elastic reaction to the

III
III
Summing up : 1 97
III
 exigency of the moment, flexibility, sociability and adaptability
and which correspond to their craving for recognition and their
desire to engage personally. Thus they prefer those activities in
which they represent dignity and authority, which give them a
symbolic significance as they identify themselves to a large ex­
tent with the authority or dignity of a role. In their case, the of­
fice or dignity is less of a duty than is the case with the compul­
sive persons; instead it is rather the opportunity to heighten the
glamour of their personality which is why medals and titles are
particularly attractive to them. All activities in which the ability
to make contact is important and which satisfy their need for the
human reference, their wish for an " audience", are popular with
them. They are the persuasive door-to-door representatives or
the convincing and suggestive salesperson who induces one cus­
tomer to buy some old dusty article as a real bargain and anoth­
er, who merely wanted a tie, to buy a whole new suit of clothes
before leaving. They are everywhere where charm, physical at­
traction, adroitness and spontaneous goal-orientation are re­
quired; where improvisation is important and winning by sur­
prise and taking people unawares. They are drawn by all profes­
sions which offer vague promises of life in the "big wide world"
or which bring them into contact with it; photo models, fashion
models and managers; the j ewellery and beauty industry as well
as the hotel business also attract them. In their performance they
are more person than issue-oriented which makes the perform­
ance very dependent on whom they are working for. With the
requisite talent they can sublimate their dispositions and charac­
teristics, their strong desires and imagination, their expressivity
and j oy of presentation into artistic pursuits, particularly into
those of acting and dancing.
Aging and death are the final unavoidable realities of our life
which cannot be denied forever. Unused to accepting realities and
to bowing to necessity, hysterics have the tendency to shut their
eyes to these realities and for as long as possible. Age and death
are facts, of course, this cannot be denied, but this pertains to oth­
ers and not really to oneself. This is why they attempt to sustain
as long as possible the illusion of eternal youth and the idea of a
future still before them full of all kinds of opportunities. They

1 98 : T h e h y st e r i c pe r s o n
•
are particularly susceptible to all kinds of methods and practises
that promise to preserve youth, as well as for teachings that deal
with life after death, preferably as a continuation of their p erson.
A frequent result of disregarding their own death is that they do
not make their wills in time or leave their affairs in order so that
they can sometimes leave everything in chaos behind them. In
old age, under the pressure of impending death, they are not in­
frequently subject to sudden and radical reorientations and al�
terations in their behaviour which are reminiscent of the saying
"young whore, old Mistress Piety" and which, when observed
closely, have an opportunistic appearance so the authenticity of
such a conversion is somewhat open to scepticism. These are the
ones who have the most difficulty in aging with dignity but have
in its place the ability to glorify their past and to live in memories
which they have altered according to their wishes and in which
they play the leading role. Some do manage to give the manner of
their dying some glamour and can make an impressive perform­
ance of leaving the stage of life by dying with heroic dignity.
Art in all its forms is the preferred domain of hysteric per­
sonalities; what they create carries indelibly their personal sig­
nature; sometimes they tend towards a certain exhibitionism. They
are good letter-writers and have a leaning towards autobiography
and self-portrayal; colourfulness, originality and vitality are their
strengths; however formality is not very important to them. They
also have a marked tendency towards daydreaming in which the
inherent danger is that their imagination is not directed in a healthy
way towards preparing for life, but is drawn away from it into a
world of dreams and desires increasingly distant from reality -
only an artist could make something creative out of this.
The dreams of hysteric personalities - insofar as they reflect
the structurally-specific problematical nature - often show wish­
fulfilment in a naIve form, have something illusionary about them
because the laws of reality are suspended and thus have a fairy­
tale character. Easy solutions for existing problems are " dreamed
up" - in a hopeless situation one can suddenly fly or has magical
abilities or another deus ex machina appears out of the blue and
saves the situation. The suppressed anxiety in the depths is not
infrequently expressed in dreams in that one no longer has solid

..
.
Summing up : 1 99
•
 ground under one's feet or is suddenly on the edge of a cliff - situ­
ations, that is, which one could typify with the image of the rid­
er over Lake Constance. Their dreams are usually colourful, live­
ly, full of incidents, and even longer dreams are usually easily re­
membered. Further, it is also characteristic that the resolution of
a difficult task that would necessitate great effort is not under­
taken by the dreamer but is dealt with by other people.
If we try to trace a rising line of hysteric personality struc­
tures from the healthy person with an hysteric personality im­
pact to the light and more severe disorders with this personality
structure, it will look like this: lively-impulsive persons with ac­
centuated self-love and desire for recognition - narcissistic need
for confirmation and being the centre of attention - supervalent
craving for recognition and contact addiction - father-daughters
and mother-sons who have not detached themselves from their
family story - hysterical unauthenticity, role-playing and retreat
from reality leading to imposture - eternal teenage girls and
youths - misogynists and man-haters who do not accept their
gender role and not infrequently avoid it by becoming homo­
sexual - "castrating", destructive women with a marked hatred
of men and Don Juan types with a revengeful attitude towards
women - phobias - severe hysterical, clinical syndromes with
emotional and physical symptoms which cannot be ascribed to
one particular organ system but tend to affect the extremities (signs
of paralysis).
The healthy person with an hysteric personality structure im­
pact is willing to take risks, has a love of adventure and is always
ready to turn to something new; he or she is flexible, plastic, live­
ly, often ebullient and full of contagious enthusiasm, lively and
spontaneous, improvising and experimental. He or she is a good
companion and never boring, there is always "something hap­
pening"; they love all new beginnings and are full of optimistic
expectations of life. Every new start seems to them to contain all
opportunities, is filled with the magic that dwells in every new
beginning, as expressed in the quote at the beginning of this chap­
ter. This person gets everything moving, shakes up traditions and
obsolete, dusty dogmas and has something overpoweringly com­
pelling as well as much charm that they know how to employ.

2 00 : T h e hyste r i c person
•
They do not take anything too seriously - unless perhaps them­
selves - because they are cognizant of the relativity of most things
in life; they are better at impulse-setting and getting-things-mov­
ing than in perseverance and patient carrying-out of plans. But it
is just this impatience, this curiosity and light-heartedness towards
the past which allow them to see and to grasp the chance that oth­
ers with a different nature might not see or that they would re­
gard as a deterrent, a barrier. Thus, headstrong and daring, they
can see life as a colourful adventure; and for them the meaning of
life lies in living it as richly, intensely and fully as possible.

•
•
Summing up : 201
•
 •
•

:
•
·
Conc lusion

I f eve ry o n e k n ew a l l t h a t m a d e u p t h e ot h e r,
h e w o u l d fo r g i ve e a s i ly a n d w i t h p l e a s u re ,
t h e re wo u l d b e n o p r i d e , n o c o n d e s c e n s i o n .
H a fe z

ehind the four primary forms o f anxiety are general and hu­
Bman problems that we all have to deal with. Each of us will
encounter the fear of commitment in one form or another; all of
which have in common the feeling of our existence, our person­
al living space or the integrity of our personality being threat­
ened. Every trusting opening of oneself, every love in our lives
or tenderness can endanger us because we are then unprotected
and more vulnerable, must sacrifice something of ourselves, give
up something of ourselves to someone else. This is why all fear
of commitment is linked to the fear of a possible ego-loss.
Everybody also encounters the fear of self-becoming, of in­
dividuation, the process of individual differentiation. The various
forms of its manifestation all have the common denominator of
the fear of loneliness . Every individuation means removing one­
self from the protective community. The more we become our­
selves, the more lonely we are because then we experience the
isolation of the individual.
Everyone also encounters the fear of transience in his or her
own way; it is an inescapable fact that we repeatedly experience
that something is finished, that it ends, is suddenly no longer there.
The more tightly we cling to something, want to retain it, the
more we are subj ect to this fear. In all its forms it reveals itself as
the fear of change.

202 :
• Conc l usion
•
 And everyone has also encountered the fear of necessity, of
the harshness and severity of finality, all forms of which have in
common the fear of being inescapably tied down to something.
The more we strive for non-binding freedom and caprice the more
we must fear the consistency and limitations of reality.
As the great anxieties in our lives which are so important for
our mature development cannot be avoided, we pay for our at­
tempt to circumvent them with countless small, mundane anx­
ieties. These neurotic fears can be projected onto almost every­
thing and can be dissolved only when we have recognized the ac­
tual fear behind them and have begun to deal with it. In the
displacement of, in the playing down and caricature-like distort­
ion of these existential fears, the neurotic anxieties appear to be
without meaning to us - they are only tormenting and provok­
ing. We should, however, learn to see them as alarm signals, as an
indication that somehow we are not quite as we should be, that
we are attempting to avoid something instead of dealing with it,
something more existential and which the displaced fear is try­
ing to conceal. Encountering the great fears is a partial aspect of
our development toward maturation; the displacement onto those
substitute neurotic anxieties not only has a paralysing and in­
hibiting effect but distracts us from the crucial tasks in our life
that are integral to our being human.
Thus, anxiety in the basic forms we have described takes on
an important significance: No longer is it merely an evil to be
avoided if possible but - and right from the very beginning - a
factor without which our development cannot be imagined.
There, where we experience one of the great fears, we are always
at the centre of one of life's challenges; in accepting the fear and
in attempting to overcome it, we develop new skills - every mas­
tery of anxiety is a victory which makes us stronger; every avoid­
ance of it is a defeat which weakens us.
As was clearly to be seen in the biographical examples, our
anxiety has a prior history, a phylogeny. The degree, intensity
and obj ect of our anxieties as adults have always been pre-shaped
and determined by our childhood fears. The person with a more
or less successful childhood is, if no catastrophic happenings in­
tervene, generally in a position to deal with the basic anxieties; at

Co n c l u s i o n : 203
•
 least insofar as he or she will not suffer illness because of them as
he or she was able to construct a stable foundation for their per­
sonality .
Those persons, on the other hand, who were subject too ear­
ly to age-inappropriate anxieties and strokes of fate, who found
no support in their environment, will later experience fear as much
more threatening and oppressive because it activates old un­
processed fears stemming from a very early age. In one of its forms,
psychotherapy can help in the processing of these fears. What can
also be a help, however, in the case of anxieties which are almost
unbearable but when seen from an obj ective point of view appear
to be out of proportion, is to realize that one is certainly dealing
with the re-animation of childhood anxieties which one was help­
less against as a child but against which one now has weapons
available which were lacking in the past: trust, hope, discernment
and courage.
Rilke once said of humankind, "Make him know his child­
hood once again, the unconscious and the wonderful, and of his
portentous early years, the endless ring of legend rich in mys­
tery" - they are certainly profound words, but sadly this is not
true for many people; their early years were rather richer in dark­
ness than in mystery, more oppressive than portentous and more
frustrating than wonderful. But for them also it can help to
process their past in a psychotherapeutic post-developmental
process and thus free themselves as far as possible from their in­
juries. The encounter of our disposition with the environment
into which we are born - environment to be understood in the
broadest possible sense - makes up what we call destiny; this, our
destiny is pre-formed in its beginnings by our childhood; it com­
mences here - it is the "imprinted form which develops through
life". But psychotherapy has given us the possibility of recog­
nizing that some things which we believed to be destiny and, there­
fore, to be suffered, are consequences of early environmental dam­
age and can be made up for at a later date.
It is important to mention that, with regard to this early im­
printing, the respective societies play a decisive role. If they have
been neglected here, it is not because their significance has been
underestimated but because the parents are the main persons of

2 04 :• Conc l u s ion
•
reference in the early years of childhood. Sociopsychological in­
fluences only touch the child tangentially through its parents,
through their attitude towards society, to authority, to perform­
ance, to religion and to sexuality among other things. This is why,
in the described faulty attitudes of the parents toward the child,
there is also some social criticism insofar as the parents are mem­
bers of a community, a culture, a social class or a ruling ideology,
and they convey the demands of these to the child. Society, and
the state also, must deal with the four basic anxieties, and their
response to them differs depending on the ruling ideology.
With the four primary forms of anxiety, or with the four ba­
sic impulses or basic demands, something generally valid and fun­
damental is meant which, already reduced to its essence, belongs
to our existence. This also seems to be based on the fact that we
theoretically always have four possibilities of responding to a life
situation; to every human relationship, to every task or demand
we can adjust in many ways. We can take note of them while dis­
tancing ourselves from them; we can lovingly identify with them;
we can accept them as we would a natural law or try to transform
them according to our wishes. Every essential task, every deci­
sion, every crucial human encounter, every fateful incident car­
ries the potential of all four possible responses within it. To have
them available to us and to employ them as the conditions of the
situations and our own character demand or, at least, to take them
into account as alternatives when making our decision is a sign
of vitality. But not only that, sometimes, for instance, a human
relationship demands that we must practically live all four im­
pulses in a vital pervasion. Think of education: This requires from
the educator a necessary creative detachment in order to ac­
knowledge the child's self and to permit it; it requires a loving at­
titude in order to make the development of trust possible for the
child and to understand the child with empathy; it requires a
healthy strictness and consistency so that the child can experi­
ence order; and finally it requires trust in and respect for the au­
tonomy of the child so that one does not mould the child according
to one's own wishes thereby estranging it from itself.
Such " completeness ", however, is only ever possible for the
individual to a limited degree as we humans are imperfect and in-

Concl u s ion : 2 05
 complete. It seems to me to be important, though, to orient the
unilaterality of our being which limits us individually towards
the imagined idea of such a wholeness. Each of us has his or her
individual possibilities and limitations, his or her incompletenesses
and unilateralities based on one's inherited physical and mental
constitution; on the environment and influences one has en­
countered; on one's individual experiences and acquired patterns
of behaviour; and based on the life history that shapes one's per­
sonality and character. One person will attempt to affirm his or
her limitations and unilaterality and to live as fruitfully as pos­
sible because they know that the "wholeness" cannot be attained.
Thus they become, in a manner of speaking, a representative of
one of the four basic attitudes, an exponent of one of the four ba­
sic impulses which they will live with the greatest possible per­
fection. Another will attempt to gradually approach the whole­
ness, the completeness because he or she knows that "perfection"
is unattainable and that the richest self-realization is not possible
from one's own self alone. The greatness of the one lies in the
conscious renunciation of possibilities and in the consequent per­
fecting of their being with all its limitations; the greatness of the
other lies in integrating as much as possible of what is initially
strange and foreign to their being, and thus always expanding
anew. Perfection and completeness - two human ideals, both of
which are unattainable and which we can only hope to work to­
wards within the bounds of our limitations.
We can apply them to the four basic aspirations: Always, we
can try to stay true to ourselves, to retain our individuality, to
avoid dependencies and, through insight, to understand the world
and to live our self-being without fear.
Always, we can try to free ourselves from the constricting ego,
in human closeness, in compassionate love and selflessness, in
pushing beyond limits, in a transcending commitment and self­
abandonment.
Always we can try to acknowledge that what we feel to be
true, good and beautiful is something eternally valid and for the
permanence of which we oppose short-term, changing influences
which want to upset and destroy it; to be firm advocates of laws
and systems that we have seen to be necessary.

206 :• Concl usion

•
 And finally, always we can want our freedom, say yes to the
everlasting changing of life; instead of the above mentioned " apol­
Ionian" attitude assume a "dionysian" one which affirms life in
its whole glory and formidableness and thus rediscover both in
one's own soul.
And always we can - as the schizoid does - avoid close hu­
man contact from fear of ego-loss; we can - as the depressive does
- remain in dependency from fear of separation and loneliness;
always we can - as the compulsive does - cling to the habitual
from fear of change and ephemerality; or we can - as the hysteric
does - fall prey to arbitrariness in order to avoid necessity and
finality. These lead respectively to the avoidance of one or more
of the great challenges and in the same measure our humanness
becomes more fragmentary.
Let us mention that two complementary antinomian person­
ality structures often exert an instinctive attraction on each oth­
er, a fascination - because nothing tends to fascinate us more than
when someone else lives as a convincing example of what we feel
to be a possibility in ourselves, but have perhaps suppressed or
not yet learned or were not permitted to experience. It appears
as though we wish to come to "wholeness" through the respect­
ive countertype, to a completeness which should liberate us from
our individual limitations and unilaterality; which of course also
has a great deal to do with sexual fascination.
In this sense, schizoid and depressive personalities tend to at­
tract one another as do the compulsive and hysteric. Is our un­
conscious yearning for completion expressed herein, the wish to
find in the partner what we are lacking in ourselves ? Do we have
an inkling of a possibility of being delivered from the fetters of a
fateful and predefined structure ? At any rate, the possibility of
this completion could lie in the antinomian attraction of the coun­
tertype. But only if we are prepared to accept the being-different
of the other, to want to take them seriously and to understand
them, can we hope to discover this Other in ourselves and to de­
velop it. But of course in real life this looks a bit different: every­
one attempts to draw the other into their orbit, wants to make
the other as like him or herself as possible, which results not only
in negating the creative dynamism but also in creating bitter strug-

11

Conc l u s ion : 2 07
11
 gles. Or one hopelessly misunderstands being-different from the
other because one is not willing to learn something new or be­
cause one measures them against one's own scale of reference,
which, of course, is not applicable to the other.
When schizoid and depressive partners feel instinctively drawn
together, this is usually for the following reasons: the schizoid
can sense the willingness and ability to love of the depressive,
their willingness to make sacrifices, their empathetic troub1ing­
themselves and their self-effacement; he or she can sense that here,
if anywhere, lies the chance of being delivered from their isol­
ation, the possibility in the partner of being able to make up for
something, that they were never permitted to experience: a feel­
ing of trust and security. The fascination lies in the fact that the
schizoid can feel in the depressive possibilities that are also in­
herent in their own being but were never activated in their de­
velopment. And conversely, the depressives are fascinated that
the schizoids live something that they have never dared to do or
were never permitted to do: to be an independent individual with
no fear of loss and no feelings of guilt. At the same time, they
sense that there is someone here who urgently needs their will­
ingness to love. How unsuccessful this can be has been described
above. When the schizoid feels the clinging pull of the depres­
sive, this constellates his or her central fear of dependency and
when the depressive senses the urge to independence of the
schizoid, this constellates his or her central fear of loss. Then both
escalate their defence behaviour to an endless tragic misunder­
standing.
The person described as compulsive is fascinated by the colour­
fulness and vitality, the willingness to take risks and the openness
for everything new of the hysteric countertype because he or she
so superva1ent1y clings to the habitual, is always so intent on se­
curity, thereby - and they sense it themselves - needlessly con­
stricting their lives. And correspondingly, as we have indicated,
the hysteric is fascinated by their countertype because they have
the stability, solidity, the consequence and reliability, this 1iving­
within-the-system which he or she is so sorely lacking. And again
this can lead to tragic entanglements and misunderstandings if in
the relationship, each attempts to force his or her way of being

208 :
• Conc l u s i on
•
onto the other from the standpoint of their own specific anxiety.
Then the compulsive, with increasing efficiency, pedantry and
nagging, with dogmatic inflexibility and claim to power and with
their tendency to want to coerce, will only drive their partner to
growing hysteria because he or she feels as though the air they
need to breathe is being denied them. The correctness, sobriety
and objectivity of the compulsive partner, who hides his or her
central fear of change behind this behaviour, makes the hysteric
feel as though life with them is programmed, predetermined, lack­
ing glamour and variety, without spontaneity and an enlivening
of daily life with small bright spots which they need as much as
they do affirmation from the partner who is all too sparing with
it from fear of spoiling them. From his or her central fear of be­
ing tied down too much, the hysteric will then unsettle and alarm
the compulsive partner more and more deeply or even drive them
to resignation in the face of the hysteric's incomprehensible il­
logic, contradictions and irresponsibility, now consciously em­
ployed as a defence; but it is particularly through their demands
that they lead the compulsive partner to use ever stricter meas­
ures. Here also, both merely live alongside each other and miss
the chance to integrate their complementary natures.
In both cases, help can only lie in understanding the concerns
of the other, taking them seriously and not hardening one's own
structure due to anxiety. However, in the case of countertypes
with extreme features, this is scarcely achievable because both
partners experience a heightening of their anxiety due to the oth­
erness of the partner and feel they must defend themselves against
it; then they no longer feel the fascination exerted by the coun­
tertype but only perturbation and alienation.
Seen from this aspect, knowledge of the four basic attitudes
and basic fears can also be helpful for partner relationships as well
as for other interpersonal relations. With the tendency, so com­
mon today, of dissolving partnerships when the first disappoint­
ments arise, one often robs oneself of the chance to develop one­
self a little further through attempting to understand the other.
Because these four forms of being-in-the-world are possibil­
ities fundamental to our being, they have always existed and will
always exist. Different times, cultures, social structures and col-

Concl usion : 2 09
•
 lective living conditions; period-specific ideologies and values;
ethical and religious, political and economic attitudes - all give a
different accentuation to the experiencing of the basic anxieties,
and to a different evaluation of the structure types. Thus, whole
epochs can fall under the dominance of one of the four structure
types, which means that the individual corresponding to a pre­
vailing attitude can develop more fully as the children are already
brought up in this way; the countertype has more difficulty be­
cause it is collectively rejected or devalued.
Therefore, an agricultural-settled culture will foster the guard­
ing traits, that is, the tendency towards tradition, towards experi­
ences handed down unchanged, towards security, possession and
permanence - traits such as we have described pertaining to the
compulsive. The urbanisation and industrialisation which we ex­
perience today, which has torn us from many natural ties and
which demands of so many that they occupy themselves with
uninspired activities as well as threatening to lead to mass stereo­
typing processes, has, as does every uprooting, brought in its wake
a clearly recognizable schizoidizing effect. This is in the de­
scribed sense of a growing lack of commitment and neglect of the
emotional side, supported by a technocracy in which everything
has become possible. It is all the more important for us then, to,
on the one hand, accentuate the positive aspects of schizoidia,
namely the striving for individuation - not as an isolating self­
realization and egocentric uniqueness, but as a task in the service
of a greater, superindividual whole; and on the other, cultivate
more consciously the antinomian attitude of reflecting on emo­
tional and human values.
The obvious drawing to a close of the patriarchy with its typ­
ical traits of absolute power and authority, its clinging to trad­
itions and its own institutions was an expression of the domi­
nance of the compulsive; but no longer on an organic-living basis
as in the agricultural communities, but rather with a much stronger
accent on power, on suppression and exploitation of the dependent
and the weak. This resulted in a much sharper constellation of
the antithesis, expressed in extreme form in the demand for anti­
authoritarian education, in the sexual revolution and in the dis­
solution of taboos, and positively in the search for new freedoms.

210 :• Concl usion

•
In the collective too, there is the tendency toward completion in
order to equalize pathological unilateralities, a self-regulatory pro­
cedure which, however, often becomes conscious only late in the
day leading then in rhythmic processes to the outbreak of what
has been suppressed. The more extreme outbreaks, the more ex­
tremely unilateral the former attitudes were.
Without a doubt there is a connection between the four forms
of being-in-the-world and the ages of life, that is, between the ba­
sic impulses and biological processes. Following the above-men­
tioned infantile phases of development, in adolescence the cen­
trifugal generally predominates, that optimistic feeling that we
and the world are full of possibilities, the future lies before us and
we map out our lives full of hope and love of adventure. In the
so-called "best years" of our lives, the tendency grows towards
creating a stable framework for life and settling into it; the cen­
tripetal power with the tendency to certain limited goals pre­
dominates, we expand the territory of our power and possessions.
Self-realization in our profession, partnership and parenting fol­
lows. After the middle years, many then experience a change; the
desire for the realization of the possibilities in our being, which
everyday life with its duties and demands has not so far permit­
ted, becomes stronger. In a greater self-forgetting we would like
to be released from our ego-adherence, life's essential questions
arise in a new form as do metaphysical-transcendent needs, and
we have to begin to gradually learn to let go, to accept ephemer­
ality for ourselves also. And finally, in old age, in the conscious­
ness of approaching death, we are confronted by loneliness in a
new form and can perhaps become wise in the acceptance of the
ultimate loneliness. On the other hand, there is the feeling of be­
longing to the "intrinsically human" in the consciousness that we
are part of a greater whole to which we will return - as language
expresses in the word "alone" ("all-one"), which characterizes
the isolated being-alone as well as the salvation of being-aIl-one.
Naturally, these age-correspondencies are only certain accentu­
ations, but they allow an indication that certain natural laws are
expressed in them.
And perhaps there is a continuation. From about the middle
years onwards, we seem to relive the early phases of our devel-

Concl u s ion :
• 21 1
•
 opment backwards on a higher level, whereby we must re-con­
quer the corresponding anxieties once again. This begins when
we realize that the future lying before us is limited, that the cor­
nucopia of all possibilities no longer lies in front of us - here we
encounter again the fear of finality. Then we realize that what we
have created, material goods and mental possessions, change be­
neath our hands, that our vitality decreases, that there is no ab­
soluteness and no permanence - and thus we experience again the
fear of transience. Then we experience separation; the children
leave us and start their own families; we lose those close to us to
death and we begin to understand that we must learn to let go -
which constellates in a new way the fear of loneliness. And in the
last phase of our life, death itself is waiting for us; dying, that we
share with no-one, into which we can take no-one with us - and
we encounter for the last time the fear of self-abandonment, this
time to death. The cycle of our existence is complete with this
last step into the great unknown, out of which we emerged with
our first step.
Of course, some people who do not dare to complete these
steps repeat the reversal in a much more literal way: they do not
accept aging and wish to remain young at any price; the more
they feel their time and their strength dwindling, the more they
cling to their possessions. In old age they become children again,
are only interested in eating and drinking, in their digestion and
their health, and finally end up as helpless dotards who are diffi­
cult to distinguish from helpless infants.
The reader might be disappointed when attempting to recog­
nize him or herself in one of the four described personality struc­
tures and cannot come to any definite conclusion, but rather finds
in him or herself a bit of each as well as of each of the four basic
anxieties. For me this seems to be in favour of the reality and
verisimilitude of the basic anxieties and the personality-structure
types that they do not manifest in a "pure" form. Such unam­
biguousness would correspond much more closely to our need
for clear definitions and limiting systems than the reality of life,
which always does violence to this. If, in addition to this, the ba­
sic impulses and the corresponding anxieties are general human
conditions and if their implementation is connected to the tra-

212 :• Concl usion

•
version of infantile phases of development that we all must un­
dertake, we must be able to discern them all as possibilities and
as inklings in ourselves. If we have done this, we can even say that
we are now more alive in a certain sense, the more we are at home
in all four areas. When none of the basic impulses is omitted, it
would mean that we were able to run the gamut of the childhood
phases, in which the impulses and anxieties attained their first im­
print, in a relatively healthy way. Unilaterally overaccentuated
personality structures are, therefore, rather endangered than oth­
erwise and clearly show before our eyes the significance of early
childhood for our healthy development.
If we disregard severe neglect or impairment to children which
is a sign of illness in the parents, we can say that not only do par­
ents represent destiny to their children, but children also repre­
sent destiny to their parents. The extreme differentiation, the rich­
ness of predisposition resulting in such enormous variation of the
individual personalities, as well as the very long period of infant­
ile dependency and great susceptibility to disturbances in its de­
velopment, make the human creature more endangered than oth­
er living creatures. Whether a child "appeals" to us as parents,
whether it is easy to love, whether our ability to love can flow
towards it unimpeded, whether it corresponds to us in its being
- quite apart from certain wishes that we have as to how it should
be and develop; whether, on the other hand, it is difficult for us
to empathize with and to understand the child in its particular­
ity, whether it appears strange to us and we have to make an ef­
fort to love it to the best of our ability and in the way we think
we ought to, whether it causes us worry which makes us experi­
ence ourselves as helpless in dealing with it, whether it makes us
feel that it cannot accept us as parents in the way it wants to and
needs to - all this becomes its destiny as well as ours and lies far
beyond any guilt. What we can do though to avoid severe im­
pairment to the child is to, first and foremost, acquire more know­
ledge of its early needs and of our own possible faulty attitudes
in its infancy; this is also the chance to recognize any impairment
early and perhaps to correct it.
For this, in addition to the " great psychotherapy", we have
today many possibilities available to us: play therapy, educational

Conc l u s ion : 213

•
 counselling, family therapy; behavioural and structural family
therapy; marriage counselling, group therapy for married cou­
ples or individual therapy of a family member who constitutes a
burden on the others, or of the child impaired by him or her. In
the case of possible somatic, or organic illnesses we have long tak­
en obligatory prophylactic school screening for granted and in a
case of somatic illness seek medical advice as a matter of course.
Oddly, though, we still have no corresponding prophylactic
measures for the obligatory examining of our children with re­
gard to their emotional or mental state and the conflicts in par­
ent-child and teacher-pupil relationships; although today we
know that many somatic illnesses have emotional roots and that
early emotional impairment can have grave results. Here we are
still barbarians, if the word can be taken to mean that we, from
ignorance that we could remove if we were willing to go to some
effort, continue to allow harm due to an indolence of the heart.
Parents, educators and state institutions should combine their
forces and pay more attention to the prophylaxis of neurotic de­
velopments - even if only in their very own interest.
And once again on the topic of anxiety: if we can understand
the anxieties that torment us as an indication that we find our­
selves in a faulty imbalance or are shying away from one of the
great challenges of life, not daring to venture upon a new phase
of development, this can help us to recognize the challenging char­
acter of the anxiety and to grow beyond the momentary phase in
which we find ourselves and towards a new freedom, a new or­
der and responsibility. It can thus show us its positive, creative
aspect and become the impetus for transformation.
And maybe the allegory used at the beginning can be of help
to us, in the consciousness of our participation in dynamic pow­
ers which, in spite of all discrepancy and oppositeness are held
after all in unshakable order in a living equilibrium which never
constitutes a standstill or static calm nor degenerates into chaos .
Every over-accentuation o r every ceasing of one o f the cosmic
moving impulses would endanger our solar system, perhaps
destroy it. On the human level: every unilateralization or loss of
one of the basic impulses endangers our inner order and can make
us ill.

214 :• Concl u s ion

•
 In the participation in these cosmic powers and also in our
imprinting by our interpersonal environment, the double aspect
of our being is expressed; the human being with his or her allot­
ment of time-transcending, superpersonal orders and natural
laws and of their whole humanness - their time-transcending eter­
nal aspect. And the human being as a historic being and unique
individual in the exchange between their disposition and the en­
vironment they are born into, and in which they must grow up
- the transitory aspect. As a temporally limited being, we have
acquired our individual biography and our self-imprint with
their unilateralities and constraints; as a human being, as a part
of "humanity", we have an inkling of perfection and complete­
ness in us which can raise us above our past and the limitations
acquired there in the contemplation of what humankind shares
that is not bound to time, culture or race but which means "hu­
manness itself. "
If there were someone who had dealt with the fear of com­
mitment in the real sense and was able to open themselves in lov­
ing trust to life and others; who at the same time dared to live
their individuality in a free and sovereign way, without the fear
of losing protective security; who had also accepted the fear of
transience but could still shape the paths of their life fruitfully
and with meaning; and finally who could shoulder the systems
and laws of our world and our life in the consciousness of their
necessity and inescapability without the fear of being too restricted
in their freedom - if there were such a person we would have to,
without doubt, acknowledge in them the highest maturity and
humanness. But even if we can only approach this in a limited
way, it still appears essential to have the image of a whole hu­
manness and maturity as a goal to be striven for; it is not an ide­
ology thought up by people but a correspondence of the great
orders of the cosmos to our human level.

&

Conc l us ion : 215

•
 Index

Abstraction, anxiety as 9 Causality, hysteric p ersonality and

Addictions 68, 8 8f, 9 1 , 97f, 1 04 1 60 - 1 62, 1 64
Affects 50, 1 2 8 , 1 3 0, 1 32, 1 34 - 1 3 6, Challenge, anxiety as a 9f, 1 00,
1 39 203, 2 1 4
Aggression, as initiation of contact Change, fear o f 1 0, 1 3 - 1 5, 2 8 , 52,
34 67f, 1 09 - 1 2 1 , 1 3 5 , 1 3 8, 1 54, 1 5 8 ,
-, compulsive person and 1 1 9, 202, 207
1 2 8 - 1 3 5, 1 55 -, willingness to 1 5 9, 1 86, 208
-, depressive p erson and 74 - 78 , Childhood, role of childhood in
99 anxiety formation 1 5 - 1 7, 25,
- , evasion o f 74 3 1 , 3 7, 42, 45, 6 1 , 74, 76, 89, 96£
-, hysteric person and 1 75 - 1 77 1 09, 1 2 8 , 1 3 1 , 1 3 8 , 1 42, 1 83£
-, schizoid p erson and 2 1 , 3 1 - 34, 1 95 , 203 - 205, 2 1 3
54 Christian belief 66, 1 00, 1 02, 1 04
Altruism 65, 8 8 Christian church and oppression of
Anti-authoritarian education sexuality 1 20f
1 46, 2 1 0 Circle of protection 3 3
Apathy 89, 1 03f Closeness, avoidance o f 2 1 , 2 3 , 2 5 ,
Arrested development 1 6, 28 3 0f, 3 5 , 48, 5 0 , 5 2 , 64, 99
Arrogance 54, 56, 1 8 1 Clumsiness 47, 1 3 1 , 1 53f
Art, hysteric person and 1 99 C ollection instinct 1 1 1 , 1 24
-, schizoid 4 1 , 5 8 Commitment, depressive
Atheism 5 6 p ersonality and 6 1 f, 64, 70, 99f
Attraction o f opposites -, fear of 20, 29, 3 3 , 4 1 , 43, 48, 99,
see Fascination of the opposite 202, 2 1 0, 2 1 5
personality type -, t o life 1 2f
Aversion, as archaic form Communication, difficulties with
of anxiety 3 1 24, 47
-, in early childhood 3 1 -, relieving effect of 1 6, 23, 50, 1 77
-, suppressed 1 1 9, 1 2 6 Complementary p ersonalities 1 2 ,
1 5, 207, 209
basic forms of anxiety 1 1 , 1 4f, 1 7, Completeness 205 - 207, 2 1 5
203 Compulsion, definition 1 4 8f
-, as antinomian impulses 1 5 , 1 03 Compulsive acts 1 1 8, 1 20
blackmailing 70, 72 C onsciousness of fear/anxiety
Buddhism 1 04 7, 2 1 1

216 :• I ndex
•
Correctness, exaggerated 1 3 0, 1 8 1 ,
209
Cultural relativity of specific
anxieties 8
Cynicism, schizoid person and
27, 34, 48, 5 5
Death, awareness o f 1 5 1
-, fear of 1 8, 5 9, 1 1 3 , 1 5 7
Delusion, depressive personality and
65, 1 0 1 , 1 05
-, schizoid p ersonality and 2 8 , 52f
Dep endency, depressive personality
and 62 - 66, 7 1 f, 74, 79f
-, knowledge of 80, 1 1 0, 208
- on fellow human beings 2 3 , 25,
3 6, 43, 56, 5 9, 79f, 84, 89, 1 22,
1 47, 1 72, 1 77, 1 92, 207
-, sexual 1 70, 1 72
Depression 62, 66f, 69f
Desire, sexual 25f, 34, 1 2 7, 1 68
Development-appropriate anxieties
10
Differentiation, fear of 6 3 - 66, 72,
202
Disappointment, comp ensation of
66, 68f, 1 07, 1 70 - 1 73
-, prevention of 29, 5 5 , 66, 86, 1 93
Dishonesty 1 1 0, 1 67
Disposition, role of 9, 1 5, 1 7, 3 5f,
78f, 1 3 5f, 1 3 9, 204, 2 1 5
Dream interpretation 5 1 , 1 03 , 1 07,
1 1 6f, 1 54f, 1 99f
Early childhood, care in 3 7f, 80
-, overstimulation in 3 8
-, relation to mother in 70, 8 5 , 92,
1 06
Egocentricity 4 1 , 50, 56, 2 1 0
Emotions, control of 3 3 , 1 1 4f, 1 1 7,
1 1 9, 1 22, 1 2 8 , 1 32, 1 34, 1 3 8f, 1 75
-, evading of 7, 74, 1 1 8, 1 32, 1 6 1 ,
1 64
-, regulations of 1 24, 1 49, 1 5 5 , 1 59
Empathy 70, 78, 1 07
-, lack of 26, 32, 5 1 , 8 5 , 1 2 6
Environment, role o f 9, 1 5, 1 7, 35f,
3 8, 4 1 f, 48, 54, 79, 94, 1 1 2, 1 3 5 -
1 3 9, 1 77f, 1 84, 204, 2 1 5
Envy, depressive p ersonality and
76 - 78, 87, 90, 93, 1 00 - 1 03
Esteem, striving for 1 75f
Eternal son 95
Fanaticism, compulsive person and
1 1 2f, 1 2 0, 1 56
Fascination of the opposite p erso­
nality type 60, 1 03 , 207 - 209
Fatalism 45, 68, 1 05f, 1 72
Finality, fear of 1 4, 1 59, 1 65 , 1 77,
1 86, 203 , 207, 2 1 2
First-time experience 1 0
Freud, Sigmund 3 7, 1 1 7, 1 1 9
Freudian slip 1 03, 1 1 9
Fromm, Erich 62
Fundamental imperatives of human
life 1 2f
Gender role, parents as models for
1 73 , 1 78f, 1 82, 1 94
Generation conflict 1 1 2 - 1 1 4, 1 54
Guidance during childhood 4 8 ,
1 3 7, 1 52, 1 78f, 1 8 1 - 1 83 , 1 94
Guilt, feeling of 26f, 3 1 f, 4 8 , 5 3 , 56,
67, 69, 72f, 75f, 80f, 83 - 90, 92, 95,
99 - 1 02, 1 06, 1 1 9, 1 2 1 , 1 26, 1 2 8 ,
1 3 1 f, 1 40, 1 44, 1 52f, 1 55, 1 64, 1 66f,
1 83 , 1 9 1 , 1 94f, 1 97, 208
History, life without 1 66
- of personal anxieties 8, 1 5 , 30,
4 8 , 1 87, 203, 206
Homosexuality 47f, 54, 1 72, 200
Humility, depressive p ersonality
and 65f, 77, 1 02 - 1 05 , 1 08
Hypochondriac anxieties 1 32, 1 56f
Hysteria, as a female answer to
patriarchy 1 25, 1 85f
I ndex : 217
It
 -, as counter-reaction to
suppression 1 84 - 1 8 6
-, development o f 1 71 , 1 83f, 1 87,
1 93f, 209
Idealization of other people 64f,
1 3 5 , 1 70f
Ideology, compulsive p erson and
1 2 8f, 1 4 5
- , depressive person and 65f, 74,
77, 8 7, 1 00 - 1 03
Imagining the feelings of others
22f
Immediate satisfaction of desires
1 62f
Impotence 96, 9 8f
Indecision, compulsive personality
and 1 1 5f, 1 32, 1 42
Individuality 12, 20, 5 8f, 1 46, 202,
206, 208, 2 1 5
-, depressive p ersonality's fear of
64 - 66, 71 - 73, 90
-, formation of 1 2, 1 8, 6 1 , 64, 66,
90, 1 3 7, 1 46, 202, 1 2 0
Inferiority, s ense o f 2 4 , 8 7 , 1 0 1 ,
1 53 , 1 83
Infidelity 29, 47, 1 89
Internalization of the mother
figure 80, 89
Interpretation of dreams
see Dream interpretation
Intolerance 1 03 , 1 1 2f, 1 1 7, 1 49,
1 5 1 f, 1 89f
jealousy, compulsive p erson and
127
- , depressive person and 66f, 69,
82
-, schizoid person and 2 8f
jung, Carl Gustav 1 1 7, 1 47
Kinzel, Augustus F. 3 3
Knowledge o f mortality 7 , 1 3 , 1 1 2,
151
218 :• I ndex
•
Laziness, depressive personality and
8 1 , 97, 1 04, 1 07
Leisure time, depressive personality
and 93
Logic, hysteric personality and
1 6 1 , 1 65 , 1 74, 1 76, 1 86f, 209
Loneliness, acceptance of 48, 55,
59, 2 1 1
-, fear of I 1 f, 2 1 , 3 1 , 5 0f, 5 3 , 5 9,
6 3 , 65, 99, 202, 2 1 1 f
Lorenz, Konrad 3 3
Loss, compensation o f 68
-, fear of 1 3f, 5 1 , 62 - 65, 70f, 72 - 74,
76, 78, 80, 90, 99, 1 06, 208
- of the centre 41
- of motherly love 3 0, 3 8 , 76, 1 06,
1 09
Love, ability to 2 5 - 2 8, 3 0, 40, 43,
5 7, 6 1 f, 65, 71 - 74, 78, 1 00, 1 09,
1 27, 1 67f, 1 72f, 208
- deprivation of 74, 8 5 - 8 7, 1 2 8 ,
1 39
- motherly/parental 35f, 3 8, 45,
6 1 , 63, 70, 80 - 8 7, 96, 1 06, 1 3 9,
1 4 1 , 1 53 , 1 7 1 , 1 78, 1 80, 1 84, 1 8 8 ,
1 9 1 , 1 96f, 2 1 3
Manic depression 1 04
Marginal forms of p ersonality
types 60
Marriage, compulsive p erson and
1 2 3 - 1 25, 1 27
-, schizoid person and 29f, 47f
Martyr, self-stylized 75, 77
Masochism 27, 65, 73 , 75
Maturation 1 78, 1 83 , 1 87, 2 1 5
- difference between emotional
and intellectual 49f
-, of women in patriarchy 1 25
-, through anxiety management
8 - 1 0, 78, 1 3 1 , 1 93f, 203
, through new encounters 1 59
Mead, Margaret 1 83
Melancholia 76, 7 8 , 89, 1 04
Milieu, influence in p ersonality
formation 1 5, 3 9, 45, 1 3 1 , 1 43 ,
1 45, 1 47, 1 79 - 1 8 1 , 1 84 - 1 8 6,
1 89f, 1 93f
Miracle, hysteric p erson's waiting
for 1 62 - 1 64, 1 95f
Moral superiority, feeling of 65,
74f, 8 7, 1 00, 1 32, 1 8 7
Mother, hatred towards 89f
-, role of 1 7 1 f, 1 78, 1 82 - 1 85
Narcissism 48, 1 69, 1 75 , 200
Necessity, as a virtue 4 8, 65, 8 7,
1 00
-, of a partner 62, 73 , 1 69f
Neurosis 1 7f, 93 , 1 0 1 , 1 1 5, 1 2 1 ,
1 47, 1 5 7, 1 93f
-, and fear 1 7f, 1 93f, 203
Obedience training 1 3 0f, 1 3 7, 1 4 1 ,
1 46, 1 53
Obj ect loss 5 1
Openness t o the world 1 4, 3 5 , 208
Paralysing effects of anxiety 9, 1 42,
203
Paranoid self-referentiality 23, 52,
1 02
Parents, compulsive p erson as 1 52
-, depressive person as 1 06
-, hysteric person as 1 96
-, schizoids as 5 7
Patriarchy 1 25 , 1 4 8, 1 5 1 f, 1 85f,
1 90, 2 1 0
Pedantism 1 1 8, 1 24f, 1 3 0, 1 53 , 1 5 5 ,
1 57, 1 64, 209
Perfection(ism) 1 3 5, 1 43, 1 49f,
1 52, 206
Permanence, compulsive personality
and 1 09 - 1 1 2 , 1 3 6, 1 5 8f
-, human strive for
1 3 - 1 5, 2 1 0, 2 1 2
Personality structure, four types of
1 6 - 1 8, 2 1 0, 2 1 2
Pessimism 8 5
Political radicalism 5 8
Prejudice 1 1 1 , 1 7 1 , 1 8 7, 1 90
Prenatal influences on child
development 3 7, 42
Professions preferred by
compulsive persons 1 29, 1 3 1 ,
1 45, 1 5 5
- preferred by depressive p ersons
88, 1 05f
- preferred by hysteric persons
1 97f
- preferred by schizoid p ersons
5 7f
Progress 8f, 1 1 1 , 1 97
Proj ection of fears and deficiencies
onto others 22f, 27, 29, 44, 54,
1 67, 1 95, 203
Proofs of love, demand of 26, 1 70
psychosomatic symptoms 6 8 , 77,
92, 96, 1 3 3f, 1 80, 2 1 4
Psychotherapy 8, 1 7, 1 95 , 204
Puberty 1 0, 25, 34, 4 1 , 47, 82, 94,
121
Public opinion, dependence on
1 47
Reality, attitude towards 22, 50,
82, 98, 1 5 7, 1 6 1 , 1 63f, 1 67, 1 76,
1 78f, 1 8 7, 1 93f, 1 96, 1 99f, 203
Religion, compulsive personality and
151f
-, depressive personality and 1 04
-, hysteric personality and 1 94
- negative influences of religion
on psychic development 1 02,
121
-, schizoid personality and 55f
Resignation 69, 76, 8 1 f, 89, 1 04,
1 07, 209
Revolution, schizoid and hysteric
inclination towards 5 8 , 1 1 4, 1 97
Rivalry between father and s on
1 72, 1 75
I ndex : 219
•
 Sadism, compulsive person and Super-ego 1 3 8
1 23, 1 26, 1 3 0, 1 54f Superiority, feeling o f 54, 6 5 , 74f,
-, tendency of schizoid p erson 8 7, 1 00, 1 32, 1 54, 1 7 1 , 1 8 7
towards 26, 34 Suppression of emotions,
Science and technology, depressive compulsive personality and
personality and 1 05 1 1 4f, 1 1 7, 1 1 9f, 1 2 8 - 1 3 0, 1 32,
, relation to anxiety 8 , 4 1 1 34, 1 3 9, 1 52
- schizoid person's favour for 23, Surrendering oneself, fear of see
55, 57 Self-abandonment
Self-abandonment 1 5, 2 9 , 4 0 , 62,
65, 2 1 2 Teacher, compulsive p erson as
Self-pity 6 8 , 76 1 30, 1 45
Self-referentiality 23, 52, 1 02 - depressive person as 1 06
Sense of guilt 26f, 3 1 f, 4 8 , 5 3 , 56, 67, -, hysteric person as 1 96
69, 72f, 75f, 80f, 83 - 90, 92, 95, 99 , schizoids as 47, 5 7
- 1 02, 1 04, 1 06, 1 2 1 , 1 2 6, 1 2 8 , 1 3 1 Therapy s e e psychotherapy
- 1 3 3 , 1 40, 1 46, 1 52f, 1 5 5 , 1 64, Time, hysteric personality and
1 66f, 1 83 , 1 9 1 , 1 94f, 1 97 1 62 - 1 64, 1 67
Sex crimes 2 8 Toilet training 1 3 7, 1 3 9f, 1 55
Sexuality, and love 2 6 , 67, 7 3 , 1 2 7, Tradition, compulsive p ersonality
1 70, 1 73 and 1 1 2f, 1 54, 1 5 8
-, compulsive person and 1 2 6f Transience, fear of 1 4, 1 1 0 - 1 1 2,
-, female s . in patriarchy 1 25 , 1 72, 1 3 6, 1 5 1 , 1 57f, 202, 2 1 2, 2 1 5
1 8 5f Triangular relationships 1 72
-, hysteric person and 1 6 8f
Sibling, hostile feelings towards 1 40 Uniqueness, sense of
-, relationships with 99, 1 40, 1 45 , see Individuality
1 70 - 1 72, 1 76 Universality of anxiety 8
Society see environment unwanted children 36, 3 8, 45
Somaesthesia 46, 1 3 1
Spoiling mother/parents 8 0 - 84, Virtue, depressive p ersonality and
8 7, 94, 96, 1 80, 1 90 - 1 92, 1 96 65, 69, 75, 87, 1 00
Stagnation due to avoidance of
anxiety 9, 1 6, 73 Warning, anxiety as a 9
Stimulant, anxiety as 9 Western civilization, schizoidizing
Stirnimann, Fritz 3 6f, 42 effect of 4 1 f
Stuttering 1 42, 1 4 6 Will t o power, compulsive person
Subj ect-being, fear o f 6 4 , 6 9 , 8 9 , and 1 22, 1 26, 1 3 0
9 1 , 9 9 , 1 02f Withdrawal of love 27, 34, 1 3 9
Suicide 45, 70, 72, 89, 1 04, 1 2 1 , Women, fear of 95, 1 86
1 86, 1 8 8 World loss 5 1

2 20 :• I ndex
•